Frederick Forsyth is a British author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Fist Of God. Born in Ashford, Kent, Forsyth was educated at Tonbridge School. He later attended Granada University in Spain. At the age of 19, he became one of the youngest pilots ever in the Royal Air Force, where he served until 1958. He then became a reporter and spent three and a half years working at a small newspaper before joining Reuters in 1961. In 1965, he joined the BBC and was an assistant diplomatic correspondent. From July to September 1967, he covered the Biafran War between Biafra and Nigeria. The Deceiver is a novel about a retiring agent of the British SIS named Sam McCready. The frame story is set in 1990 as senior civil servants in Whitehall set about reforming the intelligence services. Convinced the world will now be a safer place they want to save money by offering older intelligence officers alternative, lower paid positions, or compelling them to retire. They decide to kick off the process with a high-profile example and so offer a selection of accounting or admin jobs to the legendary Sam McCready, the so-called ‘Deceiver’, a rumpled, unclubbable man who was unexpectedly appointed head of the SIS in 1983 and surprised everyone by running it efficiently for the past seven years. When McCready turns down the jobs he’s offered and refuses retirement, it triggers a tribunal into his case… You can listen online to free English audiobook “The Deceiver” by Frederick Forsyth on our website.
