
The summer before he goes to college, Ricky Colenso travels to Bosnia to volunteer as an aid worker. A few weeks later, he disappears and is never heard from again. A family grieves and is offered little hope - in the fog of that horrible time and place, the killer, too, has vanished.
Attorney Calvin Dexter hangs his shingle in a quiet New Jersey town, has a reasonably successful practice, and takes the hills strong while triathlon training. But Dexter is no ordinary man.
In a world that has forgotten right and wrong, there are few like Cal Dexter who can settle the score. And so, years later, a worldwide chase is on and Dexter begins to draw a net around the killer. But this time CIA agent Paul Devereux must find a way to stop Dexter before his quest for vengeance throws the world into chaos.
A heart-stopping novel of murder and mystery, double-cross and triple-cross, old loyalties and new hatreds, Avenger has all of Frederick Forsyth's page-turning trademarks.
©2003 Frederick Forsyth; (P)2003 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC
In 1982 Frederick Forsyth set a standard for the international thriller with his now classic The Day of the Jackal. His novels since have been complex and compelling, but not until Avenger has Forsyth crafted as chilling a tale. Eric Conger guides us through the convergent subplots around the death of a young American aid worker and the circuitous route of retribution set in motion by his tycoon grandfather. Conger's cool detachment helps the listener follow the many threads of the story while driving the suspense. His characters--from ex-Vietnam tunnel rat Cal Dexter to Serbian warlord Zoran Zilic--are clear; his accents are expert and his pacing as perfect as Forsyth's. The settings change from Serbia to a South American jungle, flashback to Vietnam, pass through CIA headquarters and bucolic New Jersey, and end on September 10, 2001. Forsyth's attention to detail and calculated coincidence are handled with finesse. Eric Conger's success with nonfiction narrative serves him well. He's able to move listeners through the historical detail on Vietnam and Serbia without ever letting the intrigue lag. His performance gives the difficult blend of involvement and objectivity that highlights the keen suspense. (c) AudioFile 2003
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