The Dogs of War
(1974) is a war novel by Frederick Forsyth chronicling a company of European mercenary soldiers hired by a British industrialist to depose the government of the African country of Zangaro. An eponymous film was released in 1981, based upon the novel and directed by John Irvin.
The mercenary protagonists, (like the protagonist the author's earlier novel The Day of the Jackal [1971]) are professional killers — ruthless, violent men, heroic only in the word's loosest sense, thus, they are anti-heroes. The Irishman Carlo Alfred Thomas "Cat" Shannon, commander of the mercenary group, is the exception; the others are life's losers, emotionally impoverished, expendable men.
The story details a geologist's mineral discovery, and the preparations for the attack: soldier recruitment, training, reconnaissance, and the coup d'йtat logistics (buying weapons, transport, payment). Like most of Forsyth's work, the novel is more about the protagonists' occupational tradecraft than their characters. The Dogs of War title is a term from line 270, scene 1, Act III: Cry, 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war, from the play Julius Caesar (1599), by William Shakespeare.
Novelist Forsyth draws upon his journalistic experiences in reporting the Biafran War between Biafra and Nigeria; though fictional, the Central African 'Republic of Zangaro', is based upon Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony . The novels's dedication — five named men and "the others in the unmarked graves" concludes: "at least we tried" — clearly alludes to Forsyth's time in Biafra; the dark tone and cynical plot of the story stem from the same source.