This subpar war-on-terror thriller from Diamond Dagger Award–winner Forsyth, with its unknowable outcome, offers less suspense than his Edgar-winning debut, The Day of the Jackal, where the ending is never in doubt. A Muslim extremist, known only as the Preacher, is spreading the message of violent jihad via English-language videos, and his acolytes have begun targeting public officials in the U.S. and the U.K. The job of stopping him falls to Kit Carson, an ex-Marine now part of a super-secret agency in Virginia called Technical Operations Support Activity. Carson, who’s known as the Tracker, assembles an assortment of allies straight out of a Mission Impossible script, including a reclusive teenager who’s a master hacker employed to trace the Preacher. Some readers will wonder why Forsyth bothered to give Carson a personal incentive to complete the mission. Others will find a lack of memorable characters an obstacle to genuine engagement. Agent: Ed Victor, Ed Victor Literary Agency. (Aug.)

Action sequences are TIPSY WITH TESTOSTERONE.”—The New York Times

“A story that’s AS CURRENT AS TOMORROW’S HEADLINES.”—Mobile Press-Register

“A HIGH-STAKES THRILLER…The Kill List is intense to the very end.”—Midwest Book Review

“Forsyth’s new thriller proves he has lost none of his powers…[He] remains THE MASTER OF HIS TRADE.”—Daily Express (UK)

This cutting-edge thriller features a real U.S. agency known as TOSA, Technical Operations Support Activity, with a real “kill list.” A TOSA agent identified as “the Tracker” is told to find and kill an Arab jihadist known as “the Preacher.” George Guidall’s masterful delivery captures the escalating tension as well as the international danger and intrigue as the two lead characters move from Washington, D.C., to Mogadishu, with many stops in between. Guidall perfectly renders simple character sketches of key players: a neurotic teen computer ace who discerns the computer trail the Preacher leaves behind, support teams of Israeli operatives, and a lethal assault team from Britain. Guidall’s narration of the behind-the-scenes manipulations will engage listeners to the climactic finish. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

More than 40 years after he gave us the Jackal, Forsyth gives us the Preacher, a masked jihadi extremist whose videos are radicalizing Muslims in the U.S. and England into killing public officials, law enforcement officers and the like. The Preacher tops a special list of enemies marked for death by a covert U.S. government agency. The man assigned the kill is decorated former Marine general Christopher "Kit" Carson, aka The Tracker, a fluent speaker of Arabic who has experience eliminating al-Qaeda leaders. Carson has a personal investment in the operation: the Preacher was responsible for the death of his father. Having had his life saved by the Tracker several years ago in Afghanistan, the agency's director, "Gray Fox," has a special investment in him. When the government's best computer experts are unable to penetrate the Preacher's secret Internet protocol address, the Tracker recruits Roger Kendrick, an agoraphobic teenage computer whiz holed up in his room in Virginia. Drooling over the super-sophisticated equipment he's given, he quickly determines he is up against the Preacher's own computer expert, dubbed the Troll, and creates a cyber alter ego to penetrate the Preacher's fan base. From there, the kid is a few steps away from planting malware that will enable the Tracker to determine who the Preacher is and where he is based—not Pakistan, where a cohort of his operates, or Yemen, as was thought, but Somalia. Here, Forsyth is as methodical—at times as colorless—as his subjects. But he powers his plot with a clean efficiency, providing an absorbing account of the clockwork moves and split-second decisions required to close in on and dispatch the enemy. Strong descriptions of the settings add to the book's appeal. Inspired by an actual kill list, Forsyth's latest thriller is, like Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File, ready-made for the screen.