Icon (1996)

Well anybody who likes history and political thrill ,just lap it up
( )

Finished. I liked it. Review sometime to follow - or maybe not because it's been a hard couple of months following mum's passing.

It's a shame I am reading this at the moment because I won't remember a thing about it, being currently consumed with thoughts that won't turn off and boundless grief. Icon covers an interesting period of modern Russian history. sigh. Looks like it's one I will have to come back to sometime.


The west Indies fish make their 2nd appearance around page 168 many years later.. ( )

I enjoyed this fast-moving thriller with its mix of real and fictional events. I especially liked the twists and turns with surprises around almost every corner. ( )

It has been a _long, long_ time since I read [Day of the Jackal], but Forsyth hasn't lost his touch. Until the very, very end I found it almost plausible--or at least I was willing to put a lid on the box of my unbelief. ( )

This is not my favourite Forsyth novel but not the worst either (did not like "No Comebacks). The novel seems to me not a novel at all, especially in the first half of the novel where you are introduced to hundreds of characters who disappear in a few pages. I don't think most are real but it seems like I am taking a history course in cold war spying when I read that section. It was a bit "Clancyish" for my liking.

The novel picks up with Jason Monk's adventures in Moscow in the second half of the book. The novel finally seems to have a purpose now, that being to stop the election of Igor Komarov to becoming president of Russia and executing his manifesto. However, there was not much suspense to the actions...he did this, he did that, the Russians bungled here, the Russians bungled there.

There were a couple of disturbing loose ends for me...did the British set up a totally innocent man to be assassinated in his farm back yard and the assassin get away with it? They did not even try to protect him. Perhaps that was the way things were done but it was a direction in the story that seemed purposeless to the story for me.

Anyway, for the type of novel that it was, it was readable. But I found I could put it down for a day or two and not miss much. ( )