The Kill List is an up-to-the-moment thriller about the hunt for a radical Islamist preacher (known only as, um, The Preacher) whose online sermons have been inciting young Muslims to commit random acts of murder, in both the US and the UK. With the body count rising, the CIA put their best man on the case: an ex-Marine now codenamed The Tracker, with a Presidential blank cheque to take out the Preacher ASAP.

The Kill List is a decidedly odd book. On occasion, the hard-boiled prose verges on unintentional hilarity (as in this terse glimpse into the Tracker’s thoughts: “He wanted that proof, he needed that proof and when the cryptographers were finished he reckoned the Karachi-based chutney-maker would provide it”). The novel aims to present an overview of the vast logistical circus involved in tracing and killing a terrorist, necessitating many different shifts of perspective from CIA honchos to deep-cover Mossad agents in Al Shabaab-run Somalia. (The “kill list” of the title refers to a secret list of most-wanted terrorists okayed for assassination-sans-trial by the President.) As a former investigative journalist, Forsyth is no slouch at assembling data, and The Kill List does not lack for persuasive detail. But the author’s godlike omniscience creates a marked distancing effect, making the book read more like an extended newspaper article than a novel. As a result The Kill List is strangely uninvolving: it has no actual characters, just a set of codenames, ranks and biographical snippets, such as you might find in a Wikipedia entry. The nominal “hero”, The Tracker, is given some flimsy personal investment in the hunt for the Preacher (his father, rather conveniently, being one of the terrorist’s random victims), but is otherwise a faceless and unknowable cipher.

Alas, the book is doubly unconvincing as either a novel or as a piece of objective reportage. Forsyth’s documentarian stance is undermined throughout by his unmistakably partisan and pejorative use of language (“the religious police with their hate-filled eyes”), his seeming lack of interest in comprehending the Jihadist viewpoint, and his continual efforts to make the CIA seem like the voice of cool reason. (The good guys are forever ruling out drone strikes to eliminate their quarry, on humanitarian grounds; cynical readers might suspect the true reason may have more to do with the negative PR impact of blowing up women and kids.) Rather than being a clinically-objective account of the hunt for a terrorist, therefore, The Kill List unfortunately emerges as yet another slab of hawkish, pro-US propaganda—surely something we’ve all had enough of. The fact that I happen to agree with everything Forsyth says about Islamist militants is neither here nor there; now and again, it’s healthy to have one’s prejudices challenged by art, but The Kill List couldn’t care less about that. It’s an efficient product, catering to a specific, topical need—the need for reassurance. In a world that seems frighteningly irrational, it’s soothing to believe there are solutions to the chaos, and that Our Leaders are unafraid to make the ruthless decisions that keep us safe. Whether those decisions actually do keep us safe, or simply contribute to an escalation of hatred for the West, is evidently not a question that keeps Frederick Forsyth awake at night—and may well be unanswerable in any case.

The Kill List is certainly readable, and will likely be hailed as another triumph by Forsyth’s legion of fans; perhaps this reviewer’s inability to engage fully with the material stems not from the author’s uncritical approach to US covert action, but from an unfortunate coincidence in Forsyth’s choice of villain. The Preacher bears a certain resemblance to The Mandarin, the comical Jihadist figurehead played by Ben Kingsley in Iron Man 3 (released the same year as The Kill List, 2013), who turns out to be a jobbing stage actor just playing a part. “His Lear was the toast of Croydon,” remarks Kingsley’s employer (Guy Pearce), “wherever that is.” After such an expert satirical deflation, it’s hard to take Forsyth’s brooding villain too seriously.