The Day of the Jackal

On August 22, 1962, French President Charles de Gaulle narrowly survived an assassination attempt by the Organisation de l'Armée Secrète (OAS), a right-wing paramilitary group furious over Algerian independence. The OAS leaders, led by Colonel Marc Rodin, realize their own men are incompetent and decide to hire an outsider, a cold, professional killer with no political ties. They contact a London-based criminal who puts them in touch with a man known only as the Jackal.

The Jackal is an English assassin of unknown background, meticulous and utterly devoid of emotion. He demands half a million dollars and sets to work with terrifying precision. He creates multiple false identities, a Danish student, an American tourist, a Canadian war veteran, and commissions a custom-made sniper rifle that can be disassembled and hidden. His plan is audacious: shoot de Gaulle on Liberation Day, August 25, 1963, during a public ceremony in Paris. Meanwhile, French intelligence intercepts fragments of the plot but knows almost nothing, just a code name, the Jackal, and a vague timeframe. Deputy Commissaire Claude Lebel of the Police Judiciaire is given the impossible task of finding one man in a country of millions, with no photo, no name, and no known alias.

Forsyth alternates between the Jackal's methodical progress across Europe, buying a car in Italy, testing his rifle in a Belgian forest, seducing a woman in a Paris hotel, and Lebel's dogged investigation, which slowly pieces together clues from forged passports, hotel registrations, and a murdered arms dealer. The tension is extraordinary because the reader knows the historical outcome: de Gaulle survived. Yet Forsyth makes every step feel uncertain, every near-miss heart-stopping. The climax, set in a quiet Parisian square on a sunny August afternoon, is a masterclass in suspense, hinging on a split-second decision and a single bullet.

The novel is grounded in Forsyth's own experience as a journalist. He had covered the OAS and the Algerian War for Reuters and the BBC, and he drew on real documents, interviews, and locations. The result is a thriller that reads like a documentary, cold, factual, and utterly gripping. It won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel in 1972 and has sold over 20 million copies worldwide.[edit]