The Day of the Jackal
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| The Day of the Jackal | |
 First edition cover |
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| Author | Frederick Forsyth |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Spy, Thriller, Historical novel |
| Publisher | Hutchinson |
| Publication date | 7 June 1971 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 358 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-09-107390-1 (first edition, hardback) |
The Day of the Jackal (1971) is a thriller novel by Frederick Forsyth, about a professional assassin who is contracted by the right-wing OAS French terrorist group of the early 1960s, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France.
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The Day of the Jackal is a novel of the spy fiction genre, praised for its convincing portrayal of France in 1963, and its carefully thought-out plot. It received admiring reviews and praise when first published in 1971, and it received a 1972 Best Novel Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. It also is notable for remarkably effective suspense, considering that the Jackal's target, president Charles de Gaulle, is a real historical figure who was not assassinated, and for its realism, exploring in detail aspects of intelligence, covert operations and firearms.
While the OAS did exist as described in the novel, and the film opens with a remarkably accurate re-enactment of the Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry-led attempt on President De Gaulle's life, the remaining plot is fiction.
The story follows the efforts of an efficient, relentless assassin (hired by an exiled OAS high command) as he prepares to assassinate De Gaulle, and the efforts of an equally professional, but hard-pressed French detective assigned to identify and stop him, along with elements of intrigue and bureaucratic maneuvering at the highest levels of the French government.
[edit] Plot summary
The first part, "Anatomy of a Plot", describes the motives for the assassination. The Jackal has his first and only meeting in Vienna with three OAS leaders and discusses the price of the killing. The rest of the first part describes the Jackal's researches on Charles de Gaulle while in England, the layout of Paris in a reconnaissance trip there, and describes the weapon he plans to use. Little information is given about the nature of his plan. The Jackal sets up multiple false identities and disguises, by forging and stealing passports, driving licenses, and identity cards.
The second part, "Anatomy of a Manhunt", shows how French Intelligence finds out about the OAS plan and how Inspector Claude Lebel, a French detective hand-picked to find the Jackal, prevents the assassination. In the meantime, the French ministers debate whether or not to inform President De Gaulle (who is notoriously careless of his personal safety) about the plan.
Pressured by his superiors, Lebel does everything he can to discover the Jackal's identity. He calls upon his "old boy network" of foreign intelligence and police contacts to inquire if they have any records on such a man. Finally, the Special Branch (of Scotland Yard) give Lebel the name of Charles Harold Calthrop (his name can be used to spell Jackal in French - Cha[rles] Cal[throp]), whom the SIS have in their list of suspected assassins-for-hire, and find a match name of a man living in London. Special Branch raid Calthrop's flat, finding him gone, but deduce he must be traveling on a false passport, because they find his in their search of the flat.
The French police get close to the Jackal a few times, as the British work out both names of false passports, but he evades capture. The Jackal's OAS informant leaks French government information to the Jackal, allowing him to remain ahead of the police, sometimes by just minutes.
In the third part, "Anatomy of a Kill", Inspector Lebel understands that there is one day drawing near on which President De Gaulle will insist upon a scheduled public appearance: Liberation Day, on the 25th of August, commemorating the liberation of Paris in World War II. Despite police safeguards, the Jackal reaches Paris; en route killing a woman whom he seduces to gain shelter, then later a man (this time narrowly avoiding being seduced himself).
As the Liberation Day celebrations begin, the French police are alert. The Jackal, disguised as a one-legged war veteran, carrying a custom precision rifle concealed in a crutch, passes through the police checkpoints and makes his way to a building facing the Place du 18 Juin 1940 where De Gaulle will present medals to war veterans. He positions himself, readies his rifle, and places French President Charles de Gaulle in the cross-hairs.
Yet, the Jackal fails to take into account the Gallic custom of kissing on both cheeks, instead expecting that de Gaulle will shake hands with the medal recipient. The Jackal fires — de Gaulle simultaneously steps forward, bends to kiss the much shorter (De Gaulle was noted for his towering stature) recipient on the cheeks — and the bullet misses.
Lebel, meanwhile, inquiring at the checkpoints, surmises that the war veteran with the aluminium crutch is actually the Jackal. He and a CRS officer Pierre Valremy (portrayed by Philippe Léotard in the 1973 film) rush up to the apartment. When they burst in, the Jackal turns, shoots and kills the young policeman with his rifle.
At last, confronting each other, the assassin and the police detective — who had developed grudging, mutual respect for one another in the long chase — briefly look into each other's eyes, the one saying "Chacal" and the other responding "Lebel", before scrambling to kill each other. The Jackal must insert a new bullet into his bolt action sniper rifle; Lebel, not carrying a weapon himself, must reach for and pick up from the floor the dead policeman's MAT-49 submachine-gun. Lebel is faster, and shoots the Jackal with half a magazine-load of bullets, instantly killing him.
When the true Charles Calthrop appears, it becomes apparent to the authorities that no one knows who the Jackal was. Thomas asks, "If the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then who the hell was he?" The British authorities deny any possibility of the Jackal being a Briton, so the funeral is classified as "an unknown foreign tourist, killed in a car accident", attended only by Police Inspector Claude Lebel; "The Day of The Jackal was over."
[edit] Film adaptations
- The Day of the Jackal (1973), directed by Fred Zinnemann
- The Jackal (1997), directed by Michael Caton-Jones
[edit] Influence in real life
- Forsyth was a reporter for Reuters in France at the time and borrowed much of his detail from actual incidents he reported on.
- A copy of the Hebrew translation of The Day of the Jackal was found in possession of Yigal Amir, the extreme-right militant who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995. As published in the Israeli press at the time, police investigators believed that the assassination was partially inspired by the book, and that Amir used it as a kind of "how to" manual.
- Real-life terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez was nicknamed "Carlos the Jackal" by the press in reference to the novel, which was found in what was assumed to be his bag (but wasn't). Nevertheless, the nickname stuck.
- The method for acquiring a false identity and UK passport detailed in the book is often referred to as the "Day of the Jackal fraud" and was a well known security loophole in the UK for many years.[1][2]
- Recent assassin Vladimir Arutinian, who attempted to kill US President George W. Bush during his 2005 visit to the country of Georgia, was an obsessive reader of the novel and kept an annotated version of it during his planning for the assassination.
[edit] See also
- Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry
- Citroën DS
- The Jackal
- Assassinations in fiction
- Cordite, the assassin ingests it to look ill.
