I have received contradictory expert opinion on whether an organization known specifically as ODESSA exists, as Forsyth alleges, but there has been more than one actual organization serving the same purposes. ODESSA: Organisation der ehemaligen SS‐Angehörigen-“Organization of Former Members of the SS”-was formed to protect the identities and advance the destinies of these submerged murderers in Germany, Argentina and Egypt, and is currently involved in an attempt to develop missiles for Egyptian use against Israel. Not only because you will have to stumble this time over exposed wires of plot and, again, the dialogue's lumber, but also because the book's absorbing facts, made livelier for a while by their moral urgency, will probably sour in your mouth as the moral urgency becomes discolored. Forsyth achieved this excitement despite the lameness and hokiness that took over the book whenever he forsook his false passports, disguises and concealed rifle parts to dabble in dialogue and intimate behavior.Īlthough “The Odessa File” is as thorough as its predecessor in the ways of factual and political authenticity, it turns out to be a much more vulnerable book. Forsyth was able to make a prospective event that could no longer occur (de Gaulle had died well before the book appeared) seem exciting through purely mechanical means: the compounding of some actual political fact and the intricate, authentic details of the Jackal's patient pursuit. Frederick Forsyth's first novel, “The Day of the Jackal,” about an attempted assassination of de Gaulle, received and deserved a good deal of praise for being suspenseful.
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