THE LEGENDARY THRILLER THAT PAVED THE WAY
FORSYTH, Frederick. The Day of the Jackal. London: Hutchinson & Co. 1971.
8vo. Original publishers' red cloth with gilt title lettering to spine, original black and red dust jacket with black and white photograph of the author to rear wrapper, pp. [xi], 358, minimal offsetting to fly-leaves caused by fold-ins, otherwise fine.
First UK edition.
When a copy of the book was reportedly discovered among his possessions, the Venezuelan terrorist, “Carlos the Jackal” earned his nickname from this exhilarating political thriller which has influenced internationally since 1977 when it became an instant bestseller.
The book was completed in just 35 days, (Forsyth would confess to being ‘slightly mercenary’ in his financial incentives) and uses the reporting style employed during the writer's years as a foreign correspondent for Reuters and the BBC. It tells the tale of an assassination plot against General Charles de Gaulle, French president, in 1963 and the hunt for an anonymous Englishman ‘the Jackal’, recruited to kill Gaulle by the French terrorist organisation the OAS (Organisation armée secrete).
Lauded as the author who determined the course of the modern thriller, The Day of the Jackal was described by Lee Child as being ‘the book that broke the mould’. The novel initially opens as a work of historical ficion following the real life attempt to assasinate the president by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry of the OAS, who was later executed in 1963. He was the last to be killed by firing squad in France.
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