AVENGER (NOVEL)

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'Avenger' is a thriller novel by Frederick Forsyth and it was published in September 2003.

Contents

Plot

Plot

The first act of the novel serves to introduce Calvin Dexter, the main character of the story. Dexter is first introduced as a lawyer in his fifties who has a passion for running triathlons to keep himself in shape. As we dig into his past, we learn that he is a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran, and that his last tour of duty was as a ‘Tunnel Rat’, an extremely elite and secret task force that climbed deep into the underground catacomb of tunnels dug by the Vietcong to hunt down the enemy in their own lairs. We learn that he married and had a daughter who was lured away and either tricked or forced into prositution by Latino gang members and is eventually found murdered. Dexter sets out to find his daughters killers and hunts them down one by one and returns home only to discover that his beloved wife, who couldn't deal with the death of their only child, had committed suicide during his absence. He moves to a small town and becomes a local lawyer for his public face but when the reason and price is right he transforms himself into the "Avenger" and delivers justice by 'rendering' foreign criminals to the United States where they will stand trial for their crimes against American citizens and interests. Intertwined into the backstory of Calvin Dexter is the story of a young American volunteer from a very privileged family who was murdered while delivering aid in Bosnia during the Bosnian War.
As the second act kicks into gear, the boy's grandfather, a Canadian billionaire named ''Stephen Edmonds'', hires a tracker to discover the identity of this only grandchild's killer and eventually discovers the killer to be ''Zoran Zilic'', a sadistic hitman of Slobodan Milošević's regime. While the CIA was tracking the movements of Zilic during the war, he fell off the grid after the fall of Milošević. Edmonds then learns of the services provided by the Avenger and hires him to track down Zilic and bring him to the U.S. to stand trail for the murder of his grandson.
It is then revealed that a secret section in the CIA, headed by Paul Devereaux III, a dedicated patriot, had been working with Zilic in recent months with plans to use him to eliminate another terrorist threat (Usama bin Laden himself). From the CIA’s point of view, Zilic, despite his horrific crimes, had been marginalized as a result of the end of hostilities in Bosnia and could be used to eliminate a much larger threat to the American way of life.
The third act basically details the actions of the Avenger as he tracks Zilic to his palacial and fully self-sufficient farm/compound in South America and attempts to bring him to justice while the CIA operatives seek to prevent the Avenger from nabbing Zilic. The Avenger is tipped off by an unknown source that the CIA is on to him and he evades them at every turn and in the end, successfully brings Zilic to Miami where he is taken into police custody. Later, it is revealed that the one who tipped off the Avenger was the same CIA agent who was sent out to protect Zilic, as he and Dexter were partners and best friends during their days as Tunnel Rats.
Just the story ends, the date is shown to be September 10th, 2001...