The Afghan

Rating:	★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Mystery & Thrillers
Author:	Frederick Forsyth

Frederick Forsyth is one of those author who would take a couple of years to produce a new book, longer when he was just beginning.

As the Chinese idiom went, 慢工出细作. All his works have hitherto been excellent and enjoyable to read.

It is unfortunate then his latest, The Afghan, failed miserably.

In summary - an extraordinary stroke of luck enabled Western intelligence to stumble upon a key-phrase indicating a major plot by Al Qaeda terrorist. To learn more, Mike Martin was persuaded out of retirement to infiltrate the ranks of the enemy by impersonating an Afghan who was detained at Gitmo for 5 years.

Mike Martin was the hero of the earlier nove, Fist of God, and given a background to explain his being able to speak Arabic like a native Iraqi. Being an Afghan is another matter, but it was the best the Occidentals got.

Reviewers at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk provided a long list of internal errors made in the book, inexcusable given the amount of research that went into other parts of the book.

One glaring error would be the presence of the HMS Ark Royal at the 1982 Falklands War.

But even if these minor inconsistencies are addressed, there is still a major plothole in the second half of the book - namely, the role given by the terrorists to the Afghan whom they took for their own.

As mentioned by an Amazon reviewer, there was absolutely nothing for him to do, nor reason for him to be on the ship intended as the terrorist weapon.

From the cover, I was expecting a lot more on Mike Martin's infiltration of the terrorist group.

As the number of pages began to thin, I could see that there would be quick ending to follow the final revelation of the terrorists' plans.

The only word I have for it is - disappointing.