Superpower rivalry has always been a particularly fertile territory for the writer of the realpolitik thriller. The end of the Cold War, therefore, abruptly halted the publication of this genre, also known as airport reading. For a while the likes of Frederick Forsyth took their stories to locales like a rapidly fragmenting Yugoslavia, but 9/11 has brought them back to the heart of the action at Langley, headquarters of the CIA.

In his new book The Afghan — out in the US this past fortnight but slotted for a British release in early October — Forsyth’s narrative sprawls once again, demanding the might of the special relationship between Britain and the US to avert great catastrophe. Poised on the other side is, of course, Osama bin Laden and the network of sleepers ever ready at his command, including in this novel Indonesian shipping agents and Keralite inductees posing as illegal migrants in the Caribbean.

The action begins in September 2006, and among the twists in the story is a password uttered by OBL himself. His men are plotting — and this can be told without giving the suspense, such little as it is, away — to target another mode of transportation. In the nick of time “the Afghan” of the title — a British agent returning to Afghanistan in the guise of mujahideen fighter he befriended back in the ‘80s, but who’s now proving to be toughest prisoner to crack at Guantanamo Bay — averts the worst.

Forsyth’s terror network is spreading from Borneo to Port of Spain, taking in its complicity members of a Chinese triad. Forsyth also makes this contention about Kerala: “Once the hotbed of Communism, (it) has been particularly receptive territory for Islamist extremism.” 9/11 non-fiction now dominates the bestseller lists; 9/11 literary fiction concentrates on questions of identity, liberalism and the need to connect. Will the alarmism of the 9/11 thriller, with its ever present danger of playing by stereotypes, sell? Forsyth’s could be a text case.