Beginning of Essay
Frederick Forsythe, master storyteller and suspense-novelist, retired in 1997, and that was a damn shame. Since 1971, Forsythe has fabricated some of the best intrigue and espionage novels in the world, and many of his books have become films, among them The Odess ....

Middle of Essay
.... of , which to them always means "improving" the original work or "updating it for the '90s," there's no way I can let it go without a few comments. This particular tale of an enigmatic assassin who agrees to take one last job -- the murder of Charles De Gaulle -- is one of the best suspense novels ever written, and Fred Zinneman's 1973 film, with the screenplay by Kenneth Ross, is the most faithful adaptation of any novel that I know. The 1997 version? Well, I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. But you can read along anyway. In the early 1960s, Charles De Gaulle -- war hero, leader of the French Resistance, and then-president of France -- di ....