The Day of the Jackal
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 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 |
| Released | 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 is a thriller novel by Frederick Forsyth, first published in 1971, about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French terrorist group of the early 1960s, to kill Charles de Gaulle.
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The novel is a well-respected work in the genre of "spy fiction", praised for its convincing portrayal of France in 1963, and its carefully thought-out plot. It received blazing reviews and praise when it was first published in 1971, and it received a 1972 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Novel.
The novel is also notable for remarkably effective suspense, considering that the Jackal's target is a real historical figure who was not assassinated, and also for its chilling realism, which can be frighteningly related to the real world.
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 de Gaulle's life, most of the remaining plot is fictional. The storyline follows the efforts of an extremely professional assassin (hired by an exiled OAS high command) in his preparations 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
In the first part, "Anatomy of a Plot", the reasons and motive for the assassination are described. The Jackal has his first and only meeting with three OAS leaders and discusses the price of the kill. The rest of the part describes how the Jackal gathers information on Charles de Gaulle while in England, and describes the weapon he is planning to use. Little information is given about what he is going to do, however. The Jackal also sets up his false identities and disguises by forging and stealing documents.
The second part, "Anatomy of a Manhunt", shows how French Intelligence finds out about the plan and assigns Claude Lebel, a French detective, the task of preventing the assassination while the ministers discuss whether or not to inform 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 gets in touch with all his foreign contacts to inquire if they have any records on such a man. He is finally given the name of a suspect, Charles Harold Calthrop, from British Intelligence.
The French police get close to the Jackal a few times, working out both names of false passports, but he manages to evade capture. The Jackal's OAS informant leaks information from the French government to the Jackal, allowing him to remain one step ahead of the police.
In the last part, "Anatomy of a Kill", Lebel realises that there is one day drawing near on which de Gaulle will insist on making a scheduled public appearance: Liberation Day, on the 25th of August, commemorating the liberation of Paris during World War II. Despite police safeguards, the Jackal manages to make his way into Paris. He first kills a woman, then a man, who had befriended him on separate occasions.
As the Liberation Day celebrations begin, the French police are more alert than ever. The Jackal, disguised as a war veteran, makes his way to a building which faces the plaza where de Gaulle will present veterans with medals. He positions himself, readies his small, custom-made sniper rifle, and aims at de Gaulle.
However, the Jackal fails to take into account the Gallic custom of kissing on both cheeks, expecting instead that de Gaulle will shake hands with the medal recipient. As the Jackal fires, de Gaulle simultaneously moves forward to kiss the recipient on the cheeks, causing the bullet to miss.
Lebel, meanwhile, enquiring at the checkpoints, surmises that the war veteran with the aluminium crutch is actually the Jackal. He and a CRS officer (Philippe Léotard) rush up to the apartment. When they burst in, the Jackal turns his gun around and the young policmeman is killed by the bullet intended for the president.
At last coming face to face, the killer and the detective - who had formed a grudging respect for each other during the long chase - for a brief moment 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 non-automatic sniper's rifle, Lebel must pick up from the floor the dead officer's MAT-49 submachine-gun. Lebel is a split-second earlier, and the Jackal is shot with half of a magazine and dies instantly.
With the appearance of the real Charles Calthrop, it becomes apparent that no one knows who the Jackal really was. The British authorities deny any possibility of the Jackal being a British citizen, so the funeral is classified as that of "an unknown foreign tourist, killed in a car accident," with only Claude Lebel in attendance. "The Day of The Jackal was over."
Gay activists have criticised the book - and the film made on its base - for what they considered a streotypical presentation of homosexuals, in the scene where the Jackal, hunted by the police, enters a gay nightclub and lets himself be picked up by one of the habitués. This part is constructed so as to make the reader feel disgusted with the idea of the Jackal going through with the sexual act which he had given his host every reason to expect (the Jackal kills him instead). To the contrary, in the earlier scene when the Jackal had hidden with a French noblewoman, he displays his sexual prowess for the reader's titilation (before killing her, too).
Aside from the homophobic aspect, the Jackal's conduct in this scene seems to be a major blunder, as he makes every effort to draw attention to himself in the gay club, lets dozens of people see his face with his current disguise and makes several gratuitous enemies among disapponted suitors. Unaccountably, none of them calls the police when his face is shown on TV a day later.
[edit] Film adaptations
[edit] Trivia
- 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 for acquiring a false identity detailed in the book is often referred to as the "Day of the Jackal technique", and has been exploited in many real crimes.
[edit] See also
- Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry
- Citroën DS
- The Jackal (fictional character)
- Assassinations in fiction
- Cordite, the assassin ingests it to look ill.
