The 1 mistake I made when agreeing to co-write Freddie Forsyth’s new book | UK | News

Freddie Forsyth’s thrilling 1972 novel about a malevolent post-World War II secret organization dedicated to protecting former Nazis emerged largely from his remarkable imagination. Even then, in a curious case of imitating art, Eduard Roschmann, the SS war criminal whose name and background Freddie stole, was finally brought to justice in Argentina in 1977, when a man who watched the film version of The Odessa File recognized the “Butcher of Riga” and denounced him.

Its sequel, The Revenge of Odessa – published earlier this week and a fitting testament to the veteran Express columnist’s genius for a good story that has helped him sell a staggering 75 million books – was quite a different matter.

Speaking shortly before he died aged 86 in June, Freddie revealed he was inspired to return to the subject of his second most famous book by the chilling rise of the far right in many parts of Europe.

“The political realities defined by Odessa are still with us,” he admitted. “I’ve been mulling over the idea of ​​a sequel for a number of years. Working with the very talented Tony Kent, we’ve been able to create an exciting, new and contemporary story.”

Forsyth’s co-writer Tony Kent explains why this sequel suddenly became so urgent for Freddie, years after he “retired” from writing books.

“If a real Odessa was to happen for the first time, it wasn’t about bringing the Nazis back to power, but rather about allowing them to survive and thrive,” says Kent, 47, a leading lawyer and bestselling author in his own right.

“What we did in Revenge of Odessa is much more political; it’s about the virtual rebirth of the Nazis. Freddie saw the return of the far right, especially in Germany and countries to the east like Hungary, and that alarmed him.”

Freddie, who pioneered the modern thriller with his first novel The Day of the Jackal, which he wrote in 1971, announced that he stopped writing novels in 2016 and admitted that his wife Sandy warned him after a research trip to Somalia: “You are too old, these places are very dangerous and you do not run as agilely as you used to.”

He returned briefly with The Fox in 2018, but stuck with it. However, although he retired from his weekly Daily Express column nearly two decades later, on his 85th birthday in August 2023, he never stopped thinking and talking about the topics that most interested him: politics, geopolitical power and espionage.

Indeed, at the time of his death he was contemplating one last story based on his espionage experiences.

This story may have sadly never been published, but The Revenge of Odessa is as gripping and timely as anything he wrote during his heyday in the 1970s.

Perhaps it was his instinct for a story honed over many years as a foreign correspondent, but the fact that the book emerges at a time of unprecedented global uncertainty suggests that his talent for creating something both exciting and topical remains intact.

The rise of the far-right party AfD in Germany, combined with public dissatisfaction with politicians and an increasingly militant Left, has created firebox conditions.

Britain’s growing immigration crisis, weekly demonstrations in towns and cities and growing skepticism have led to what many see as a resurgence of toxic nationalism. It was clearly time to visit Odessa again!

“I think what Freddie saw was that the world was now binary to the extreme,” Kent continues.

“We’ve created a situation where everyone is accused of being far-right unless they express far-left views, which probably includes most of the working-class population of this country.

“Some of the things we hear from the left are so ridiculous that you think, ‘Did I take crazy pills? This doesn’t make any sense.’ But it’s the same with the right. Because of some of the extremes they go to, it’s like, ‘Can’t you be serious?’ you think. But after all, what if there was a reason for this? But what if someone is making this happen? “They were doing this so that an otherwise unacceptable third way suddenly became acceptable?”

This third path is the return of the Nazis, at least in the fictional story the duo has cleverly devised.

Revenge of Odessa brilliantly features the grandson of Forsyth’s original hero, reporter Peter Miller, played on screen by Jon Voight in the 1974 film.

Set in the summer of 2025, Georg Miller, a Berlin reporter, comes across evidence that Odessa has reappeared, that they are never really gone.

Instead, they are trying to infiltrate positions of power in Germany and elsewhere. A series of seemingly unconnected events, including the burning to death of a US senator, a mass shooting by Islamist terrorists at a football match in Stuttgart, and the murder of an elderly man in the dementia ward of a German hospital, are ringing warning bells.

As Miller begins to connect the dots, he finds himself targeted by the killers of the Nazi organization his grandfather exposed three decades earlier.

Kent also introduces British spy Scott Brogan, an aging and extremely ruthless operator with practical skills to help Georg capture Odessa.

“I love the idea of ​​a hero who becomes your villain in any book. This time, by a twist of fate, Scott sided with the angels,” he explains.

“Whereas otherwise you’d be dealing with a complete idiot. He’s based on a former special forces officer I know, and you don’t want to mess with that guy.” He adds with a smile: “I have to tell him he’s involved before I read it!”

Kent first met Freddie at a Berkshire Rotary Club dinner, where he watched the author give “the best after-dinner speech I’ve ever seen.”

“I was sitting there writing notes on napkins,” he smiles today.

“His command of the room was incredible. In the middle of the night, he was asking, ‘So what are you doing?’ he asked. Turns out he thought I was from the local bookstore.”

The two found a lot of common ground at the event.

“I don’t believe in Right or Left; I believe in right or wrong,” Kent says.

“When the previous government was in power, people thought I was a far leftist because I objected to a lot of what the Conservatives were doing.

“Equally, everyone who followed me on

The pair, who bonded over their writing, met after Kent founded the Chiltern Kills Crime Writing Festival in 2023. Freddie agreed to be the festival’s patron and star guest at the opening event.

“I’m so lucky to have known him,” Kent says today. “I was surprised to find out that you actually read my books.”

In fact, it was Freddie who suggested Kent for the role of co-writer on Odessa. It was an inspired choice. For Kent, teaming up with one of his literary heroes was a no-brainer. He chuckled: “It was the fastest ‘yes’ of all time. In about a millisecond I went into shock and surprise and then I said ‘Yes’.”

“I’m going to say this now because they can’t handle the contract… but I would do it for free.”

The son of Irish immigrants, Kent grew up in a close-knit family on a council estate in north-west London. Since his older brother was in trouble with the police, he believes boxing kept him on the right track. He spent 11 years at London’s leading criminal chambers, 2 Bedford Row, before moving into the private sector at Ewing Law.

Years ago, in a Ruislip pub near where he grew up, an old school friend asked him what he was doing. “When I said I had just graduated from bar school, he thought I was a bartender,” he smiles. The father of one was 22 when he wrote the first four episodes of his first thriller and stuffed them in a drawer. The novel was finally published in 2018 under the title Killer Intent.

Since then Kent has released four more thrilling thrillers featuring military intelligence officer Joe Dempsey and Belfast-born criminal lawyer Michael Devlin.

Although sometimes described as British David Baldacci, US lawyer-turned-bestselling thriller author, Freddie was always a huge inspiration. Kent remembers an uncle giving him a box of second-hand books from a car boot sale.

“I remember reading The Day of the Jackal and thinking, ‘I don’t need to read any more of these books,’ because he was like someone who played football more leagues above anyone else,” he smiles.

“When I first met Freddie he told me how quickly he wrote it – in like 35 days. Considering the fact that it took six weeks to write it as a first book and no one changed a word… it’s literally perfect, no one will ever do that again.”

“His first three books were all like that; with The Jackal he invented the assassination thriller, then with Odessa he created the Nazis, and with War Dogs he came up with the idea of ​​mercenaries.

“He was on fire.”

For the sequel to Odessa, Freddie wrote a four or five page synopsis.

“General ideas of where the book will go,” Kent explains.

“The point was to bring it up to date, make it contemporary, and we ended up creating a 50-page mini-book.”

However, replicating Freddie’s voice was difficult at first. “Early Freddie is the greatest writer of his time. I tried to write as the Freddie of the 1970s. I tried to use Freddie’s voice and after two weeks of failure discovered he was the literary equivalent of Frank Sinatra doing karaoke.”

“The same way you get the sense of ‘Oh my God, this guy can sing,’ so does Freddie. It doesn’t sound like he’s writing, it’s effortless. But when you try to write like him, you discover how difficult it is.”

“So I stopped trying to sound like Freddie, but I tried to write like Freddie, which means I tried to fill the book with tension.”

Was he worried that the famously outspoken author might not like his work?

“I was horrified,” Kent smiles.

“Everyone gets a little scared when you launch a book, because you have to convince yourself that the book is ready to be published. Doing this with Freddie, I was waiting to be torn to give him a book.”

Fortunately, despite his illness, Freddie was able to read the finished book and happily signed it.

“It was all about making sure Freddie was happy,” adds Kent, who is busy writing another Odessa sequel, which he is not allowed to discuss; This is no surprise, considering the shocking ending of Odessa’s Revenge.

Depending on their conversations, other projects may also emerge.

“We talked about a number of projects,” Kent adds. “Nothing is official as it stands, but we’ve spent a lot of time looking at what’s on his backlist and what could be taken forward. There’s definitely potential for the future in Odessa. I think a prequel to The Jackal could actually be an interesting project.”

Watch this space!

• The Revenge of Odessa (Bantam, £22) by Freddie Forsyth with Tony Kent is out now