Icon in Espionage Aficionados

May 28, 2025 Michael Martz rated it liked it

"Icon" was a rare miss by one of my favorite writers. Frederick Forsyth's ability to meld fact and fiction to create exciting, readable stories is second to none, but methinks the fiction side of Icon was weak. The first half was very good, with great espionage action and spycraft, but a plan concocted by the good guys that had a zero percent chance of success, combined with an unbelievable finish, ruined the experience for me.

The first half of Icon built the background of the key players of th ...more

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Aug 05, 2024 cool breeze rated it liked it · review of another edition

The decade between the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11 was a difficult one for most thriller writers. They were deprived of longstanding archenemies like the Communists and the Nazis, but correspondingly grave new threats like radical Islam had not yet become apparent.

Forsyth is an excellent thriller writer, maybe the best, and the first 200 pages of this book start out well enough. The British embassy in Moscow has unexpectedly been handed an unsolicited “Black Manifesto”. It reveals that a r The decade between the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11 was a difficult one for most thriller writers. They were deprived of longstanding archenemies like the Communists and the Nazis, but correspondingly grave new threats like radical Islam had not yet become apparent.

Forsyth is an excellent thriller writer, maybe the best, and the first 200 pages of this book start out well enough. The British embassy in Moscow has unexpectedly been handed an unsolicited “Black Manifesto”. It reveals that a rising leader in ruined Russia, Igor Komorov, who is likely to win legitimate elections as the next President, is probably a new version of Hitler (note: this was written too early for Forsyth to have Putin personally in mind; he was then a minor official). The manifesto is presented to the highest levels of government in the UK and US. The leadership of both countries (Major and Clinton at the time) decide that they can’t or won’t do anything about it.

It is here that the story goes wildly off the rails. A retired spymaster of MI6 decides without authorization to share the highly classified manifesto with the “Council of Lincoln”. Forsyth describes this as an “invitation only” group of 34 Americans and 6 Brits and “probably the most influential of all” NGOs. While “denying their own existence”, they meet secretly once a year for 5 days in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The tiny membership includes such dubious figures as Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush, Colin Powell, financier Evelyn de Rothchild and, Forsyth notes, the disproportionate number of “seven Jews”. It sounds much like a more secretive and exclusive version of the Bilderberg Group (founded 1954) and the World Economic Forum (founded 1971).

The Council concedes that “Half of what is in the Black Manifesto could well have the agreement of a good proportion of the Russian people”. Nevertheless, this cabal of moguls decide that their opinions matter more than those of Russian voters and the elected UK and US governments. They decide on their own to ruin Komorov by organizing and funding a "destabilization" campaign similar to the many “color revolutions” that began being orchestrated by the West in real life in 1998. No records of their decision are kept and the operational details are left to a small committee, so that the other members can deny any knowledge, involvement or accountability.

And what is the intended outcome of their private mercenary revolution? They plan to restore an heir to the Romanov dynasty as Czar! Believe it or not, these conspirators are supposed to be Forsyth’s “good guys”! Ironic, as it was only a few books earlier that participants in such mercenary coups were the villains in Forsyth’s third novel, The Dogs of War. But, by the time of this novel, the Biafra outsider Forsyth had been invited to join the insider “cool kids” like those of the Council. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) at the time of its publication. Some people feel better about monarchy after being knighted.

The novel goes downhill from there. The skullduggery is almost all accomplished by one character, ex-CIA agent Jason Monk. He is an unbelievable Mary Sue and much of it utterly defies credibility. An excessive number of pages have to be devoted to exposition in order to explain the convoluted scheme to restore the Czar. These include lengthy sections on the Aldrich Ames spy scandal, the Russian Orthodox church, and the Romanov family tree and succession rules.

Forsyth’s action writing is still very good, 4+ stars, but the plot stinks, 1-2 stars, and this is the most repugnant set of purported “good guys” I can recall in a thriller. Only the polished writing manages to barely salvage an overall 3-star rating from this arrogant, elitist, monarchist mess. ...more

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