The Day Of The Jackal – Frederick Forsyth, 1971 ★★★★★

Anatomy of a Thriller

Genre fiction is easy to take for granted; when you pick up a thriller or a spy novel, you expect a certain kind of experience. It’s not about becoming a better person or learning something; it’s about satisfaction.

But when a novel delivers consistently in just about every facet: suspense, structure, logic, atmosphere, climax; and does so in a way that elevates the form, you need to take a step back and ask: How did he do it?

At least that’s what I do every time I finish reading this masterpiece.

The Jackal of the title is a shadowy figure hired in 1963 by the OAS, a colonialist terror group, to kill French President Charles de Gaulle. While we are occasionally privy to his thoughts, we know little about the Jackal other than he likes to live well and is ruthless in pursuit of that end.

On the Jackal’s trail is police detective Claude Lebel, as plodding as the Jackal is dashing, but possessed of a strong sense of duty and an awareness his target will not be easy to catch, or stop:

He had nothing to go on. There was no crime – yet. There were no clues. There were no witnesses, except three whom he could not talk to. Just a name, a code-name, and the whole world to search in.

As seen here, President Charles de Gaulle was dismissive of personal security. The Jackal banks on a moment like this: “There is no man in the world who is proof against an assassin’s bullet.”
Image from https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/07/26/de-gaulle-model-for-macron 

The concept is a good one, but what Frederick Forsyth does with it makes Jackal unique. Building on a real-life event, a 1962 attempt on de Gaulle’s life which opens the novel, Forsyth creates a double mousetrap worthy of Agatha Christie and then sells it with verisimilitude and clockwork precision. It’s a race to see if Lebel can catch the Jackal before the Jackal can kill de Gaulle – and how Forsyth can keep you reading even if you feel you know how it will end.

His secret is never letting up on the tension until the very last page.

All the more remarkable was Forsyth’s background. A reporter who found himself unemployed after writing his first book, the angry and political non-fiction work Biafra Story, he was desperate for money. In a preface to a 1980 omnibus edition, he explains his ambitions were modest, simply to mimic the airport thrillers that occupied him while travelling:

I thought, rightly or wrongly, that if these had been accepted for publication by some editor somewhere, the tale I had carried in my head since those tense, cliff-hanging days in Paris seven years earlier might even sell a few thousand copies. No more.

Frederick Forsyth outside his home in Ireland, 1978. In a preface, Forsyth explains: "Just after nine in the morning of the first day of the new decade I rolled the sheet through the typewriter and, two-fingered as always, pecked out the words: Day of the Jackal.
Image from https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02r7l2s

There is a smug tone to this recollection, but Jackal’s success makes it hard to resent. Before this novel, successful spy thrillers often incorporated fantastic or outsized themes like world destruction or control. Or there were the critically successful books like John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, kitchen-sink spy stories with a lived-in feeling that forwent action for moral gloom.

They might as well have occupied two different universes, the pulp stuff and the elevated stuff. Forsyth found a way of merging them.

He does this in several ways:

Set-ups – From the first page, Forsyth creates tension and hooks you in. A man is about to die, and we are privy to his last thoughts:

It is cold at 6:40 in the morning of a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.

March 11, 1963: Jean Bastien-Thiry, a French Air Force officer, stands trial for attempting to assassinate de Gaulle. The Day Of The Jackal opens with his subsequent execution.
Image from https://jeune-nation.com/kultur/histoire/le-dernier-des-fusilles-lassassinat-de-jean-marie-bastien-thiry

The matter-of-fact way Forsyth goes on to impart a great deal of information – the light, the chill, the traffic noise – adds to the realness, and one senses without Forsyth pushing the point that there are great stakes involved. The French leader has narrowly escaped assassination, and the OAS can be counted on to try again. Enter the Jackal.

A Vacuum Villain – The way Forsyth introduces his main character is unique. Not that unique; others before him went without proper names, but Forsyth is deft in his presentation. We hear the Jackal talk, at times we even read his thoughts, yet so much of his character, personality, and appearance is left off that he manages to draw you in like a vacuum.

Perhaps the most telling thing we learn about the Jackal comes right at the beginning, a passenger taking minute interest in the descent of his jetliner:

The precision of the business of landing appealed to him. He liked precision.

Edward Fox as the Jackal in the 1973 film adaptation, a must-see for fans of 1970s thrillers. In the book, the Jackal is a tad less sartorially resplendent, except late in the story when he visits a gay bar.
Image from https://www.cadandthedandy.com/2020/05/01/suits-on-film-lockdown-playlist-6/ 

And so does Forsyth. There is more of a sense that the author and the Jackal are kindred spirits, that one enjoys the craft of his business as much as the other. At the same time, Forsyth is careful to be clear that the Jackal is dangerous, brutal, and must be stopped. No false sympathy here, no equivocation.

An Unlikely Hero – Claude Lebel is no James Bond. He is looked down on by everyone he knows, including his wife. He speaks blandly and acts on logic, not impulse. This could be a problem for a story with a villain as cool as the Jackal.

But Forsyth makes sure Lebel has both our sympathy and our respect by developing him as the story’s underdog, and for the way he alone manages to mentally keep pace with the Jackal’s doings, thus giving his side a fighting chance:

“It has to be a bomb triggered by remote control, or a rifle. But a bomb could well be discovered, and that would ruin everything. So it’s a gun. That was why he needed to enter France by car.”

Michael Lonsdale as Claude Lebel, also from the 1973 film adaptation. While Fox gives the Jackal a twist of rakish charm, Lonsdale plays Lebel as he is in the book: low-key, unassuming, and cagey in the right moment.
Image from https://twitter.com/thedaillew/status/1141402424122454018

Story-Reporting, Not Story-Telling – Forsyth only wrote non-fiction before tackling this book, and it shows in how he writes it, very clear and factual, even if he’s making it all (or most of it) up.

With the Jackal, while we are sometimes allowed a peek inside his mind, often we are only given externals; a grimace, a nod, a sigh. Externals matter in other scenes, too; as Forsyth details settings and the moment-to-moment behavior of even minor characters.

In this description of a French torture room, there are no moral judgments, no false equivalency, just the facts:

Apart from the breathing, the silence of the cellar was almost tangible. All the men were in shirt sleeves, rolled up high and damp with sweat. The odor was crushing, a stench of sweat, metal, stale smoke, and human vomit. Even the latter, pungent enough, was overpowered by one even stronger, the unmistakable reek of fear and pain.

Real Life As Fiction – In his 1980 preface, Forsyth identifies his chief innovation as introducing real-life figures like de Gaulle and British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan into the story. I think the real innovation is deeper than that; he makes the fiction feel like real life.

As the Jackal gets closer to his target, he relocates in seedier lairs: "Not far from the station, he found a small and squalid hotel, of the kind that seem to exist in proximity to all main line stations the world over, which ask no questions but get told a lot of lies."
Image from https://co.pinterest.com/pin/338614465703048107/

Forsyth explains just how one can forge a new identity by visiting old churches in sleepy towns; how an armorer could make a sniper rifle compact enough to fit under the challis of a sports car; how a clandestine network of anti-government terrorists operates effectively without knowing one another by name. Everything is explained, including why a forewarned de Gaulle would expose himself to danger:

“He is a bit of a psychologist, our Jackal. He knows there is one day of the year that General de Gaulle will never spend elsewhere than here. It is, so to speak, his great day. That is what the assassin has been waiting for.”

Lovely Details – Forsyth’s writing style tends toward the dry; his exhaustive research in later works can produce a feeling akin to reading a chapter-long white paper. Here, he milks the situation with wonderful observational moments that never call attention to themselves or slow the plot, like the way a melon looks after being struck by a bullet:

Pips and juice dribbled down the bark. The remaining fragments of the fruit’s flesh lay broken in the lower end of the shopping bag, which hung like a weary scrotum from the hunting knife.

Or little snapshots of the places the Jackal visits, places unaware of a killer in their midst:

The magic of the river Seine on an August evening. Even the tourists were almost forgiven for being there and bringing their dollars with them.

The Gare de Montparnasse, a major Paris railway station and the setting for the climax of Day Of The Jackal. As Forsyth notes, the station would be extensively renovated soon after 1963, the year the novel is set.
Image from https://www.timeout.com/paris/en/outdoor/paris-then-and-now

Structure – What makes this book special ultimately comes down to the way it was built. Forsyth divides Jackal into three parts: “Anatomy of a Plot,” “Anatomy of a Manhunt,” and “Anatomy of a Kill;” clear, linear multiple narratives in miniature that work in tandem to carry the reader forward. This not only works at building drama but adds suspense when the author leaves a plot strand hanging for a beat or two.

Forsyth incorporates other elements, too, like big reveals and misdirection ploys, not unique to him then or now, but very well executed. Jackal is a tough, grim book, yet at the same time a joy.

Like many fine artists, Forsyth never quite managed to top his first work, though he has written a couple of great novels; The Odessa File immediately after and The Fourth Protocol some years later. But Day Of The Jackal stands apart from the rest of his oeuvre, because it is so original in concept and plays out so wonderfully. Reading it again, I was not impressed so much by how it expanded the horizons of a genre. I just enjoyed the marvelous way it all falls together. So will you.