He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan, The Cobra and The Kill List.

Before becoming a journalist, Forsyth completed his National Service in the Royal Air Force as a pilot, for which he flew the de Havilland Vampire.

[8] He is an occasional radio broadcaster on political issues and has also written for newspapers throughout his career, including a weekly page in the Daily Express.

[9] He has narrated several documentaries, including Jesus Christ Airlines, Soldiers: A History of Men in Battle and I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal.

As a boy, he said, he wanted to be "a fighter jock," and when he traded his career in the RAF for journalism, it was "to see the world" as a foreign and war correspondent.

As for becoming a novelist, he confessed "I never wanted to be a writer," but wrote his first full-length novel, The Day of the Jackal, because he was "skint, stony broke.

In Forsyth's second full-length novel, The Odessa File (1972), a reporter attempts to track down an ex-Nazi SS officer in contemporary Germany.

The reporter discovers him via the diary of a Jewish Holocaust survivor who died of suicide earlier, but he is being shielded by an organisation that protects ex-Nazis, called ODESSA.

[11] In The Dogs of War (1974) a British mining executive hires a group of mercenaries to overthrow the government of an African country so that he can install a puppet regime that will allow him cheap access to a colossal platinum-ore reserve.

In the end, a Swedish oil tanker built in Japan, a Russian airliner hijacked to West Berlin and various governments find themselves involved.

The Fourth Protocol was published in 1984 and involves renegade elements within the Soviet Union attempting to plant an atomic bomb near an American airbase in the UK, intending to influence the upcoming British elections and lead to the election of an anti-NATO, anti-American, anti-nuclear, pro-soviet Labour government.

At the start of the novel, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State (PUSS) of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office requires the Chief of the SIS to push Sam into early retirement.

In 1994, Forsyth published The Fist of God, a novel which concerns the first Gulf War, Project Babylon and competition between intelligence agencies.

It was intended as a departure from his usual genre; Forsyth's explanation was that "I had done mercenaries, assassins, Nazis, murderers, terrorists, special forces soldiers, fighter pilots, you name it, and I got to think, could I actually write about the human heart?

Set in the very near future, the threat of a catastrophic assault on the West, discovered on a senior al-Qaeda member's computer, compels the leaders of the US and the UK to attempt a desperate gambit—to substitute a seasoned British operative, retired Col. Mike Martin (of The Fist of God), for an Afghan Taliban commander being held prisoner at Guantánamo Bay.

In January 2018, it was announced that Forsyth would publish his eighteenth novel, a thriller about computer hackers, inspired by the Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon stories.

On 16 February 2012 the Crime Writers Association announced that Forsyth had won its Cartier Diamond Dagger award in recognition of his body of work.

[16] Forsyth was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1997 New Year Honours list for services to literature.

On 8 February 2007, Forsyth appeared on BBC's political panel show Question Time; on it, he expressed scepticism on the subject of anthropogenic climate change.

On 17 June 2008, Forsyth was interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live Midday News in relation to the restoration of the Military Covenant.