The Negotiator
The gripping international thriller from the master storyteller
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4.6 • 9 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The Negotiator unfolds with the spellbinding excitement, unceasing surprise and riveting detail that are the hallmarks of Frederick Forsyth, the master storyteller.
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 . . .
***Praise for Frederick Forsyth***
'In a class by itself. Unputdownable.' Sunday Times
'Forsyth did away with the conventions of thriller-writing and still kept readers enthralled. He reset the whole genre.' Guardian
'Meticulously researched' BBC
''Forsyth...personified the journalist-author as superstar.' Telegraph
***Don't miss Revenge of Odessa, the new book from Frederick Forsyth and Tony Kent***
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The reader almost despairs of a story getting under way in Forsyth's latest: the situation takes so long to set up, and is mired in such wearisome detail. Finally, after it has been made clear that both a renegade Soviet military group and a fanatical Texan oil baron plan to take over an oil-rich Middle Eastern state for their different twisted reasons, the action begins. The son of the American president (who is about to sign a major arms agreement with Gorbachev himself) is kidnapped, and, despite the best efforts of Quinn, the negotiator, is killed at the very moment of his ransoming. The president is stricken, a takeover of the U.S. government looms, and it looks as if the treaty is doomed. Now it is up to Quinn to find out who was behind the crime, and why. With a plucky and pretty female FBI agent, he scours obscure corners of northern Europe for the perpetrators--always to find them dead just as he arrives. In a cliffhanger of a conclusion, he brings the guilt home to Washington, the president perks up and the world is saved. As always, Forsyth is good at the details (you learn more about Dutch and Belgian road maps than you probably ever wanted to know), keeps a few surprises up his sleeve and writes action scenes more crisply, and with less gore, than Ludlum. But his characterization is flat, and much of The Negotiator is terribly familiar. By far the best parts are the negotiations for the ransoming of the president's son, which generate real tension. BOMC main selection.
