The Day of the Jackal, published in 1971, was the debut novel by Frederick Forsyth, which became famous for its “documentary” style, making it a landmark thriller of its time. It has the style of investigative journalism.
There is a historical element to the novel: the Algerian War of Independence, and a right-wing paramilitary group known as the OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète) attempting to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle.
Forsyth takes us through the Jackal’s plan for the assassination, and then the police manhunt for him through France, and finally, the endgame with the attempted assassination.
The second phase of the manhunt involves a “cat-and-mouse” game between the Jackal and the detective Lebel, raising the tension. The final phase is the end of the novel, the pace picks up as everyone – the Jackal and the police – all race to Paris for the final scene. The final coming together leads to a sudden halt in the novel as the Jackal is finally stopped. A moment of reflection as to who he really was would have helped.
I was coming at this novel having watched the original movie first. The novel has been updated into a drama series with Eddie Redmayne, which, with the changes in him being married, still keeps to the original plot without ruining it.
The novel is both easy to read and in the style of one that is begging to be made into a movie. On the other hand, it has a detached style that can lead to a lack of investment in the plot.
I did struggle to relate to the Jackal as he is a cold and plotting guy. The Jackal is oddly the least talkative of the characters and carries that pathological focus to his work. He is the one character that Forsyth doesn’t give a background to. This is where there is some moral ambiguity in the plot.
Forsyth goes into a lot of detail about how the jackal works his disguises and his gun. His research helps to make the extremities of the story – a successful international hitman and a terrorist group working together – both realistic and engaging for the era. The detail that goes into planning the plot to kill the French president is convincing in how we would not live in that world, but also how it remains grounded, not like so many novels today that are so convoluted as to be clever but not have any ounce of reality.
Forsyth brings the scenes with the French minister and departmental heads to life with the tension in politics to deliver results. He also details the travels around Europe by the Jackal.
Forsyth has a habit of giving every character a lengthy back story. Whilst this explained their motivations for what came next, it is laboured and at times pointless.
The legacy of the novel is the “Jackal Fraud.” It is a loophole where one could obtain a passport by using the birth certificate of a child who died in infancy. This method was then actually used by real-world criminals for decades before passport security was updated.
