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Frederick Forsyth books in order
Looking for Frederick Forsyth’s books in order? Look no further!
Legendary writer Frederick Forsyth is possibly best known for his thriller The Day Of The Jackal, which was a game changer for the crime thriller genre. But Forsyth’s other work is just as gripping.
With a plethora of cracking novels to explore, Forsyth will take you around the world with action-packed stories featuring mercenaries, assassins, Nazis, murderers, terrorists, special forces soldiers, fighter pilots and much more…
It’s no wonder Forsyth was awarded a CBE for services to literature and won the Crime Writers Association Cartier Diamond Dagger award in recognition of his work.
Here are Frederick Forsyth’s thriller books in publication order. Pick any title and you’re in for a treat.
Frederick Forsyth books in order:
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
1. The Day of the Jackal (1971)
It is 1963 and an anonymous Englishman has been hired by the Operations Chief of the O.A.S. to murder General Charles de Gaulle. A failed attempt the previous year means the target will be nearly impossible to get to. But this latest plot involves a lethal weapon: an assassin of legendary talent.
Known only as the Jackal, this remorseless and deadly killer must be stopped. But how do you track a man who exists in name alone?
A top pick in our round up of the best spy thrillers, this is one of the most celebrated thrillers ever written.
The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth
2. The Odessa File (1972)
It’s 1963 and a young German reporter has been assigned the suicide of a holocaust survivor. The news story seems straighforward, this is a tragic insight into one man’s suffering. But a long hidden secret is discovered in the pages of the dead man’s diary.
What follows is life-and-death hunt for a notorious former concentration camp-commander, a man responsible for the deaths of thousands, a man as yet unpunished.
The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth
3. The Dogs of War (1974)
An astonishing discovery is made in the remote African republic of Zangaro, one which could change the course of a nation’s history forever. But such a discovery cannot be kept secret for long and Sir James Manson will stop at nothing to protect this find. A ruthless and bloody-minded tycoon, Manson immediately hires an army of mercenaries and with this deadly crew behind him he sets out to topple the government and replace its dictator with a puppet president.
But news of the discovery has reached Russia – and suddenly Manson finds he no longer makes the rules in this power game. A game in which win or lose means life or death.
The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth
4. The Shepherd (1975)
It is Christmas Eve, 1957. Flying home, on leave from Germany, he is alone in the cockpit of the Vampire. Sixty-six minutes of flying time, with the descent and landing – destination Lakenheath. No problem, all routine procedures.
Then, out over the North sea, the fog begins to close in. Radio contact ceases and the compass goes haywire. Suddenly, out of the mist appears a World War II bomber. It is flying just below the Vampire, as of trying to make contact…
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
5. The Devil’s Alternative (1979)
When the entire Soviet Union wheat crop is destroyed by a devastating string of failures, the population faces starvation. The USA is quick to offer assistance. They devise a plan to trade vital food resources with the Russians in exchange for sensitive political information. But the Politburo has other ideas: the invasion of Western Europe to commandeer the food for themselves…
As the paths of communication breakdown, the American president and leaders from around the world face an appalling choice: should they allow the loss of thousands to save the lives of many more?
No Comebacks by Frederick Forsyth
6. No Comebacks (1982)
Deception, blackmail, murder, revenge – these are the themes of stories that move from London to the coast of Spain, from Mauritius to Dublin to Dordogne. Whether his subject is assassination by stealth, the cruel confidence trick or the cold shock of coincidence, Frederick Forsyth is never less than compulsive, the detail always authentic.
Ten stories with the master’s touch – a brilliantly readable first collection by an incomparable craftsman of suspense.
The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth
7. The Fourth Protocol (1984)
Plan Aurora, hatched in a remote dacha in the forest outside Moscow and initiated with relentless brilliance and skill, is a plan within a plan that, in its spine-chilling ingenuity, breaches the ultra-secret Fourth Protocol and turns the fears that shaped it into a living nightmare.
A crack Soviet agent, placed under cover in a quiet English country town, begins to assemble a jigsaw of devastation. MI5 investigator John Preston, working against the most urgent of deadlines, leads an operation to prevent the act of murderous destruction aimed at tumbling Britain into revolution…
The Negotiator by Frederick Forsyth
8. The Negotiator (1989)
The kidnapping of a young man on a country road in Oxfordshire is but the first brutal step in a ruthless plan to force the President of the United States out of office. If it succeeds, he will be psychologically and emotionally destroyed. Only one man can stop it – Quinn, the world’s foremost Negotiator, who must bargain for the life of an innocent man, unaware that ransom was never the kidnapper’s real objective…
The Deceiver by Frederick Forsyth
9. The Deceiver (1991)
Sam McCready is the Deceiver, one of the Secret Intelligence Service’s most unorthodox and most valued operatives, a legend in his own time. The end of the cold war has, however, strengthened the hand of the Whitehall mandarins, to whom he seems about as controllable as Genghis Khan, so Sam is to have his fate decided at a special hearing.
As part of the proceedings, four of Sam’s key operations are reviewed: a clandestine mission into East Germany in 1985 to contact the top Russian spy General Pankratin; the second involving a KGB colonel who wants to defect – but is he genuine? An audacious Gaddafi-inspired plot to ship arms to the IRA; and the fourth when McCready presided over the aftermath of political murder and mayhem in the Caribbean.
The Fist of God by Frederick Forsyth
10. The Fist of God (1994)
In a matter of weeks Saddam Hussein will invade Kuwait and the Allied forces need all the information they can get to help the resistance. But when they intercept a top-secret fragment of radio referring to a lethal weapon that could rain down death and destruction, one man must risk everything to stop it.
SAS Major Mike Martin is sent undercover into Kuwait to assess Iraqi strength. Taken into the heart of Baghdad by enemy forces, he is tasked with ‘running’ the Iraqi spy known as Jericho, a sleeper who can provide vital information. But at a price.
This is the most hazardous mission of Martin’s life: to find and destroy the secret weapon they call Qubth-ut-Allah – the Fist of God.
Icon by Frederick Forsyth
11. Icon (1996)
It is 1999 and Russia is on the edge of total implosion. Social and moral order has collapsed. The only rule is imposed by mafia-like criminal gangs. And a visionary patriot whose voice rises above it all: Igor Komarov.
It is in to this world that former CIA agent Jason Monk is plunged. Drawn out of retirement by the CIA’s desperate bid to halt Komarov’s meteoric rise, he must slip back in to Russia undetected and carry out a covert mission that the world depends on. With Komarov set to win the next election, Monk discovers a secret document that is smuggled in to the British Embassy in Moscow. Named The Black Manifesto, it reveals Komarov’s horrifying and deadly secret agenda.
With many Western leaders persuaded that Komraov can lead his country into a new age, and the election looming, time is running out…
The Veteran by Frederick Forsyth
12. The Veteran (2001)
A collection of five heart-stopping stories from the master thriller writer.
A miracle in war-torn Siena that begins with the persecution of a young nun in the turbulent days of the sixteenth century and culminates in the bitter German retreat from Italy; a drug smuggling heist on an international flight where the Knock pit their wits against the smugglers; a brutal urban murder, where a brilliant QC decides to defend the killers, resulting in a startling justice; an incandescent art scam at a famous London auction house, and a brilliantly plotted revenge that shatters the elegant world of the Old Masters – each story is a remarkable tour de force.
And above all here is a brilliant novella, ‘Whispering Wind’, which begins with the single survivor of Custer’s Last Stand at the battle of Little Big Horn. Then follows the rescue from rape and murder of a Cheyenne girl and a flight across the mountains and forests of the West, ending in a savage present-day manhunt in the wild lands of Montana.
Avenger by Frederick Forsyth
13. Avenger (2003)
A young American aid volunteer, Ricky Colenso, is brutally murdered in former Yugoslavia. His grandfather, the Canadian billionaire Steven Edmond, is bent on revenge. The quest to find Ricky’s murderer leads Edmond to Cal Dexter, ex-Vietnam Special Forces, the one man who could bring the killer to justice. But what starts as a personal, domestic tragedy soon explodes into a terrifying drama on the centre stage of world terrorism.
The Afghan by Frederick Forsyth
14. The Afghan (2006)
When British and American intelligence catch wind of a major Al Qaeda operation in the works, they are primed for action – but what can they do? They know nothing about the attack: the what, where or when. They have no sources in Al Qaeda, and it’s impossible to plant someone. Impossible, unless…
The Afghan is Izmat Khan, a five-year prisoner of Guantanamo Bay and a former senior commander of the Taliban. The Afghan is also Colonel Mike Martin, a 25-year veteran of war zones around the world, a dark, lean man born and raised in Iraq. In an attempt to stave off disaster, the intelligence agencies will try to do what no one has ever done before – pass off a Westerner as an Arab among Arabs – pass off Martin as the trusted Khan.
It will require extraordinary preparation, and then extraordinary luck, for nothing can truly prepare Martin for the dark and shifting world he is about to enter. Or for the terrible things he will find there…
The Cobra by Frederick Forsyth
15. The Cobra (2010)
Cocaine is worth billions of dollars a year to the drug cartels who spread their evil seed across Western society. It causes misery, poverty and death. And slowly its power is spreading…
Ex-CIA special ops, Paul Devereux, intellectual, dedicated and utterly ruthless, is given what seems like an impossible task: Stop the drug barons, whatever it costs. At his disposal, anything he wants – men, resources, money. He must assemble a team equal to the lawless men who control this deadly trade.
Up to now the drug cartels have had it their way. Up to now, the forces of law and order have played by the rules. That is about to change. Those rules no longer apply… and a dirty war is about to get a whole lot dirtier…
The Kill List by Frederick Forsyth
16. The Kill List (2013)
The kill list: the names of those men and women who would threaten the world’s security – held above top secret at the highest level of the US government.
At the top of it, a radical Islamic cleric whose sermons inspire his followers to kill Western targets. As the bodies begin to pile up in America, Great Britain and across Europe, the message goes out: discover this man’s identity, locate him and take him out.
The tracker is an ex-US marine, now one of America’s most effective terrorist hunters, with an impossible job. Aided only by a brilliant teenaged hacker, he must throw out the bait and see whether his deadly target can be drawn from his lair…
The Fox by Frederick Forsyth
17. The Fox (2018)
Most weapons do what you tell them. Most weapons you can control.
But what if the most dangerous weapon in the world isn’t a smart missile or a stealth submarine or even an AI computer programme? What if it’s a 17-year-old boy with a blisteringly brilliant mind, who can run rings around the most sophisticated security services across the globe, who can manipulate that weaponry and turn it against the superpowers themselves?How valuable would he be? And what wouldn’t you do to get hold of him?
Plus…
If you enjoy Frederick Forsyth’s thrillers, why not find out about the man himself in his non-fiction memoir?
The Outsider by Frederick Forsyth
The Outsider (2015)
At eighteen, Forsyth was the youngest pilot to qualify with the RAF. At twenty-five, he was stationed in East Berlin as a journalist during the Cold War. Before he turned thirty, he was in Africa controversially covering the bloodiest civil war in living memory. Three years later, broke and out of work, he wrote his game-changing first novel, The Day of the Jackal. He never looked back.
Forsyth has seen some of the most exhilarating moments of the last century from the inside, travelling the world, once or twice on her majesty’s secret service. He’s been shot at, he’s been arrested, he’s even been seduced by an undercover agent. But all the while he felt he was an outsider. This is his story.
There you have it – all Frederick Forsyth thriller books in order! How many have you read? Let us know in the comments below…
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I’ve read and owned all the books except The Outsider. Unfortunately, it is not available in Sri Lanka at the moment. I am a Sri Lankan living in Sri Lanka and addicted to Frederick Forsyth’s books.
I’ve read many of the books that Frederick Forsyth has written and enjoyed them. Most of all I’ve looked forward to his weekly column in the Friday Express, sadly today it’s the last one and I’m sorry about that but, I wish him a long and happy retirement, well deserved! I’ve loved reading about his little dogs, we’re Jack Russell lovers as a family. All the very best!!!
With the exception of THE OUTSIDER I read them all