Will I love The Fist of God?

“The man with ten minutes to live was laughing.” Thus begins one of the greatest war novels by one of the greatest living writers of espionage thrillers. 

Frederick Forsyth’s epic story of the Persian Gulf War mingles fact with fiction, and never lets up its humming current of suspense. Incidentally, that laughing man was Gerald Vincent Bull, a real historical figure who invented a super-gun for Saddam Hussein. Not exactly the safest line of work. 

His assassination triggered a Rube Goldberg series of events that only Forsyth would have the… well… foresight to use as the first sentence in this… show more.

From a master storyteller comes a fantastic tale. While my own book covers the period when Kuwait was threatened by Iraq in 1961, The Fist of God is set during the actual Iraq War that broke out in 1990. As well as a compelling read, there’s a wealth of knowledge and insight into the intelligence operations of that time in the Middle East. Action takes place between Washington and London, Baghdad and Kuwait. I can only recommend this for readers who have a stomach for harrowing details of the tortures of Saddam Hussein and his minions. But, that said,… show more.

Though not Forsyth’s best-known thriller, The Fist of God is reputedly his favorite. I credit this to the fascinating complexity of the storylines, one subplot after another intricately woven together, and to the way this complexity mirrors the time and circumstance of its setting: the first Gulf War. Forsyth’s vision of the mysterious weapon of mass destruction is a supergun, innocently developed by a Western engineer, but repurposed by the Iraqis as a means to launch a massive gas attack against an invading force. Though The Day of the Jackal has always been a political thriller favorite of mine, after… show more.