What do You think about The Fourth Protocol (1996)?
This is Forsythe's most successful book about the Cold War. His research into the inner workings of the Soviet goverment was so astonishingly detailed and accurate that he came under the attention of the CIA! This book included several of the most intriguing and fully developed characters that Forsythe ever created. A terrific read which was regrettably made into a movie that managed to leave out all of the romance and subtlety of the book and dull the edges of the story. Forget about the film, read the book!
—Jim Puskas
Since I had seen the film countless times, I read the book with eager anticipation. The book is a FAR more finely-woven plot than could ever be accommodated within the space of a 90-minute film, and therefore FAR more satisfying. The wealth of detail offered by Mr. Forsyth is an educational experience, whether the sections and sub-sections of the secret services, or the S.A.S. Regiment, but best of all the pin-prick analysis of the 1980s' Labour Party is wonderful to behold. The involvement of the traitor Kim Philby in a double-plot is masterly, and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then in smuggling in and trying to detonate a nuclear bomb in the U.K., the ultimate episode of television's "Spooks" must have been paying more than lipservice to The Fourth Protocol! Overall, a thoroughly good read, but only one sequence from the film which did not originate in the book, the female "assembler" who slept with the deep-cover agent (Pierce Brosnan in the film) just before he murdered her was a nice touch, but obviously not penned by Forsyth.
—Marc Maitland
This is my first British-style spy thriller, and I have to say it stacks up pretty darned good next to the American equivalent. There are no Mary Sue characters, no great intuitive leaps of logic, no silly foolishness from the Bad Guys, and only a smidgeon of authorial politics coming into it. However, it does make me sad to see that every author of this sort of stuff that I've come across is Right Wing to some extent or another. I wonder what a Left Wing spy thriller would look like, and I wonder if there is some form of the genre kicking about in Russia in which KGB agents are the heroes against CIA machinations. 3.5/5
—Nathan
