The Day of the Jackal in Espionage Aficionados

Jun 21, 2012 Feliks rated it it was amazing

Shelves: genre-thrillers

Frederick Forsythe is easily the most well-known writer of the action thriller. Action-fiction today is lucrative business in part because of its tight integration with the movie industry (action-flick franchises are the nearest thing to a steady dividend Hollywood can rely on). The paperbook side of thriller-dom is thus highly competitive but also highly programmatic; as authors all grapple with each other for name-cachet and movie-adaptations. Its a tough field to stand out in.

The more so, be Frederick Forsythe is easily the most well-known writer of the action thriller. Action-fiction today is lucrative business in part because of its tight integration with the movie industry (action-flick franchises are the nearest thing to a steady dividend Hollywood can rely on). The paperbook side of thriller-dom is thus highly competitive but also highly programmatic; as authors all grapple with each other for name-cachet and movie-adaptations. Its a tough field to stand out in.

The more so, because the modern world has grown so over-familiar with the conventions of this often-hackneyed genre. We've become this way thanks to our bewildering, current day-to-day lives in the age of terrorism. There are hideous monthly headlines in the real-world now, which supersede even the most far-fetched fictional thriller plot. So our nerves are always on edge. It all rather makes a mockery of 'armchair thrillers'. Thus, even as the field has become glutted with heavily-hyped newcomers and internet campaigns; the whole thing can seem stale, depleted, trite, and grasping.

It wasn't always this way. The golden age of action thriller writing--it can readily be seen--were the 60s/70s when for most Americans, war and chaos were found only on TV news broadcasts. In that 'pre-terror' interval Forsythe ruled. He absolutely, thoroughly, dominated this market. He was the writer to which all others were compared to. His were the works towards which every book-jacket blurb alluded. And there was a heckuva lot of fierce competition for his spot.

From approximately '67 to '77 there was a rambunctious, sprawling, paperback era with all manner of fresh action scenarios continually coming to the fore. Jumbo-jets, cruise-ships, locomotives, automobiles--seemingly, there was a thriller written for every imaginable backdrop of modern life. It was just a much simpler time when a cliff-hanger plot could always be contrived in such a way as to truly push audiences to the edge of their seats; & make their hearts race. It was a "window-of-opportunity" when more advanced technologies were still unknown. Thrillers could still 'wow' suburban audiences with exotic landscapes. Readers could still be shocked with descriptions of ugly violence always occurring in far-away countries rather than our own. These are the specific, --and the perfect-- conditions for all action-thriller fiction. Thrillers really depend on 'novelty' in all these areas to succeed.

Now, Forsythe is a British author and like many of his colleagues, he possesses a familiarity with Europe and many former British colonies throughout the world. He's similar to Ian Fleming in this regard. The first thing one can remark about his writing (as in Fleming's 'Bond' series) is his easy ability to portray countries and cultures that tend to dazzle provincial Americans. From his earliest works, he takes advantage of this: Hamburg, South Africa, Cote-azure. His casual familiarity with foreign climes, his glibness with travel--is something we Yanks envy.

Secondly, Forsythe was notorious for the rich detail he provides in the body of a plot. I'm calling this out separately as a function rather than speaking merely of his writing form. Forsythe's style is supple, economical, and observant--but so is the style of a lot of other authors. Rather, it is his fantastic capers, his assassinations, the audacious heists he writes about, which seem to tower tall above the concoctions of all other writers, in terms of rich detail.

Forsyth's technical authority sets him apart, much like Tom Clancy's did years later. Forsyth plots are living--and very feasible-- entities. Filled with gritty practicalities. How can a car can hide weapons under the carriage? How to forge papers? How to fool airport security? The grand result of intensive research: his plots are without loophole and really power the structure of his narrative. There's no dross. There's no drag. No dead weight.

Thirdly (choosing from among the many qualities which make a great page-turning read) I would say it is his pacing. Forsythe excels at slow, painstaking, building-up of layers of tension and anticipation. In the 1970s--when Forsyth's wildly successful international bestseller, the one which everyone had at least heard of ('The Day of the Jackal') held permanent spot in all paperback racks; there was really only one other title which vied with that juggernaut for pacing. That was, Thomas Harris' 'Black Sunday'. You'd often see the two of these books paired together in bookshelves and libraries all over the world. And it was for their pacing. It blew readers away. There was just nothing else like them. No two paperbacks had more tattered covers than these.

'The Day of the Jackal' of course, --a milestone we all recognize--is what Frederick Forsythe is first and foremost known by, will always be known by. His crowning accomplishment. It really was a revolutionizing display of sheer inventiveness and sustained vision which has still to be topped. Even today, many years later; this one book is still ranked among the best 2-3 thrillers ever written. Its inestimable--the impact this title had on its own genre; its indescribable--the audacity it displayed. It continues to defeat any subsequent efforts by latter-day challengers to match or even equal it.

Think about it: a story of violent, ruthless militarism...cold-blooded, deliberate, political assassination--which readers already knew did not succeed (in reality)... yet it still had people jumping up and down in their seats rooting and howling at the climax. It had people's hands trembling at the end of the tale, gripping the book's spine, breathing shallowly, eyes wide. Just extraordinary. Reverential fans still speak about how they 'felt they were traveling along' with Forsythe's famous assassin, along every step of his sinister mission. THIS is storytelling.
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Feb 10, 2012 Mark rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: assassin, thriller, 2018

Hutchinson of London fifth impression November 1971 -

And totally brilliant debut of an new writer at that time from Britain who writes about an assassination of the French President in 1963. Everybody knows that this never occurred and the famous man died the 9th of December 1970. This book is a classic and still to this day does not fail to impress readers who come new to it and even the older reader like myself returning find so much strength in this volume which can be topped with very great Hutchinson of London fifth impression November 1971 -

And totally brilliant debut of an new writer at that time from Britain who writes about an assassination of the French President in 1963. Everybody knows that this never occurred and the famous man died the 9th of December 1970. This book is a classic and still to this day does not fail to impress readers who come new to it and even the older reader like myself returning find so much strength in this volume which can be topped with very great difficulty by any modern writer. It must be difficult to write a novel that is such a masterpiece right at the start of your writing career. Even if the man did write a few books that can easily be seen as classic none of the raised the bar such as this one, many writers have tried to better this novel on the subject of assassination all still get compared with the original one, which is "The Day of the Jackal".

This book does show us a lot of the unrest of Europe, Africa, Asia after the last big war and the process of decolonization that took place after WWII among the major European nations. And it is the decolonization of Algeria and presidency of the Gaulle that is the root of military unrest in France and the failed plots to kill the General/president that starts the plot to hire an unknown assassin to kill the head of France. We get to follow the road to the killing in a most instructive way.

Anatomy of a plot
Here we are introduced to the motivation of the OAS men who want the President of the France dead. This gets plenty of air and is somehow a insight in a bit of history of Europe that is perhaps not as pretty as the French would like. We also meet the unknown assassin who starts plotting his task and all his preparations towards his assignment. Which is done in a lot of detail and you find yourselves immersed in the underworld of a Europe more than 50 years ago that is anything but dark. It is here that Forsyth does his best to start up his story and while you find what the man is doing you are somehow left in the dark what he is really up to, which makes you want to continue reading to find out how the killer is going to do the job. The last part of this part is the French Police finding out that there is an unknown assassin about and they have to stop him with absolutely no bloody idea where to look, what to look at and whom they are searching. And so the tension rises. Onward to the second part of the book.

The French police due to some questionable tactics have found out that there is threat against Charles the Gaulle and they start to mount a manhunt, which starts with them knowing nothing except the moniker "The Jackal" of le Chacal.
In an odd choice they actually give the job of hunting down this job to their best detective, which is political for he who gets burned and keeping the blame away from the political appointments. The choice seems to be a good one as this commisaire decides to use the old boys network to find out about an unknown assassin and finds in a British policeman one who actually changes the game, and even after de Gaulle kept the UK out of the European Economic Community gets his governments backing to stop the killing of head of State.
Now the heat gets turned up for the Jackal and he gets warned every step of the way and hence knows to keep out of the hand of the French police. But now he's got the full might of the French government and police-force on his tail including the whole of the British police-force.
Some of the tactics of the Jackal are basically wrong but intriguing, you know he is going to fail in the end as we all know that De Gaulle was never killed but you want to have come as far as possible.

By now the net is closing around the lone assassin and his source of information does seem to dry up when his direct opponent finally gets smart and tracks down his source of Intel and closes it down. He is now in Paris and yet seems to be untraceable for the French Police. The man has some moves left before his final confrontation with his hunter.
And yet there is no closure as the final twist is yet to come.

After close to fifty years and several reads by myself I found out what a class A thriller this still was and still had the power to make met feel the excitement and wonder which makes this just a special kind of book. And to think that this was the writers first book he had yet to show his skills in more titles , which he more than brilliantly has done several times over. But this book still is special and when you want to make a list about brilliant thrillers and this one is not mentioned in that list you have not read enough or doen your homework. Go and play some videogames instead reading is wasted on you.

If you have not read the book yet, I envy you for the bliss and great thriller that awaits you. ...more

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Jul 20, 2014 Philip rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kiss-kiss-bang-bang, thriller, 1970s, fiction-standalone, classic-fiction, 4-stars

Forgot about this book until a Goodreads friend recommended it to me. Read it years ago and remember it being much better than either movie version (although the Bruce Willis remake offers the pleasure of seeing Jack Black get shot), and think I then went on to read Dogs of War as well, but can't remember why I never really read much Forsythe after that.

Anyways, a true classic that probably deserves a re-read sometime. ...more

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