Book review – “Dogs of War” by Frederick Forsyth

The third and last of Forsyth’s series of classic novels. This one has the bonus of a fascinating behind the scenes story – its based on a real life attempted coup on Equitorial Guinea in the early 70s in which Forsyth was meant to have involvement. Certainly this is one of his more personal works, there being allusions to the Biafran War which Forsyth covered (he wrote a book about it and was sympathetic to the Biafran cause): the story starts with a thinly-disguised depiction of the Biafran War, the character of the general is supposedly based on a Biafran leader, and Cat Shannon’s passionate speech at the end against corporate meddling in African seems to come direct from Forsyth (this book seems to support colonisation, albeit from a black population). This bit doesn’t work 100% - the plan to knock off the African republic is so audacious and the mining company goes to such trouble and expense it seems a little, well, rude for Shannon to do a double cross at the end. I mean, they did pay for the coup. (It wouldn’t have felt this way had we seen the mining company do something particularly ruthless or mean, but we don’t really). There isn't much action but that there is is choice.