It requires a very rare kind of success but it’s the destiny of truly bestselling authors that they reach a point in their careers when they become parodies of themselves. In the case of the latest thriller from Frederick Forsyth, The Fox is a book that lands so squarely in the realm of parody that one might even wonder if it’s written by Forsyth at all. This feels like Forsyth written by computer algorithms; the product of some fiendish machine hidden deep in the bowels of Random House, able to create new works of fiction based entirely on the bits cut from his previous novels. It is presented as techno-thriller — the genre that Forsyth helped to establish  — but, really, for all its pedigree and gestures towards deep research, it’s a book that’s heavily invested in tone and attitude. For all that it’s about science and technology, it’s surprisingly grounded in magic and the supernatural.

The magic in question is that of a hacker who never actually hacks. 18-year-old Luke Graham is a kid with Asperger’s syndrome who can barely communicate in the real world but is a master of everything cyber. He is caught by British security services (naturally, with Forsyth, the arrest must involve the SAS and night-vision goggles) after breaking into the National Security databases at Fort Meade. The Americans want the boy extradited to face punishment but the British devise a plan to use him to further their mutual cause. What follows is a faintly ridiculous series of scenarios in which the world’s trouble spots are fixed through the power of hacking. It’s a neoconservative’s wet dream. Is Iran causing you trouble? Then simply hack into their databases and reveal what they’re up to (much to the satisfaction of the unnamed American president with the blonde hair and a button on his desk to order Diet Coke). Problems with North Korea? A few hacks soon sort that out. Is Putin being demonstrative? Again: hack, hack, hack.

It might be believable if any of this were actually about hacking. Forsyth is best when he describes factual systems in the context of a taut narrative. He’s good, for example, when he’s writing about the makeup of the world’s special forces. Yet when it comes down to the subject the book is ostensibly about it feels like the technology has passed him by. As a result, we get torpid fictional representations of hacking.

Dr. Hendricks gaped in near-disbelief. Somehow, and he had no idea how, it had been achieved: Luke Jennings had crossed the air gap and entered the right algorithms. The firewalls opened, the faraway database capitulated. There was no need to go on. They had the codes. He tapped the lad on the shoulder.

That “he had no idea how” is precisely what books of this kind would normally take a page or two to describe. Instead, data is here always hidden behind an impenetrable “firewall” which the boy genius manages to defeat. How he does it — even in vague terms — is never explained. Those “air gaps” are the most puzzling of all. It’s pure magic; as implausible as anything by J.K. Rowling.

That’s not to say that the book doesn’t display some of the virtues of a Forsyth novel. In the small space of an action-packed set piece, he’s as good as ever. The problems lie elsewhere. Sometimes the writing is laugh-out-loud funny, especially when Forsyth succumbs to his worst instincts. At his best — and make no mistake, for a time, he really was the master of the techno-thriller — he could produce stories that were gnarly with the detail loved by his fans. Yet, over the years, the details have increasingly sat on the page beside some pretty-hard edged politics that a stronger editor might well have moderated. When talking about Edward Snowden, for example, there’s no hiding his contempt.

When defector and traitor Edward Snowden flew to Moscow it is believed he carried over one and a half million documents on a memory stick small enough to be inserted before a border check into the human anus.

Don’t let the bit about the anus detract from the bit about Snowden being a traitor. He was certainly a whistleblower but the rest is arguable. And, here, really, is the central difficulty with the book.

Snowden was an adult, facing a moral dilemma, recognizing the wrongs being committed by parts of the American intelligence community in the name of national security. He made — arguably — the wrong decision but for the right motives. What happened afterward (he ended up hiding away in Russia whilst preaching data transparency to the rest of the world) was pretty much out of his hands unless he really wanted to spend the rest of his life in an American supermax.

Forsyth would have us believe that his hacker, Luke Graham, is making the decisions right for his talents but only justifiable once the British government starts to channel his gift to the service of the nation. This is the problematic rubric of the book. This is not John le Carré-style thinking, whose hostility towards the great world powers is tempered by an even greater hostility towards the world’s worst. This is Forsyth who rarely presents a world problem that can’t be solved by a SAS sniper lodging a bullet in the brain of a foe from half a mile. Given it is now the 21st century, he has simply replaced the sniper with a hacker: a blond-haired young Brit with the right attitude and willingness to serve his country. It’s an interesting twist but, in an age of severely polarised politics, it lacks nuance. Forsyth is playing to his audience, many of whom will, no doubt, love this jingoistic fantasy. For fans of the genre who enjoy characters expressing some moral doubt, this is a book as cartoonish in its naivety as it is disappointingly shallow in its execution.