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The Day of the Jackal Kindle Edition
“The Day of the Jackal makes such comparable books such as The Manchurian Candidate and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold seem like Hardy Boy mysteries.”—The New York Times
The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man.
One man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive not even his employers know his name. And as the minutes count down to the final act of execution, it seems that there is no power on earth that can stop the Jackal.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherG.P. Putnam's Sons
- Publication dateSeptember 4, 2012
- Reading age18 years and up
- File size1735 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“When it comes to espionage, international intrigue, and suspense, Frederick Forsyth is a master.” —The Washington Post Book World
“Inventive, organized, believable, and absolutely spellbinding…Suspense fiction at its very best and a cliffhanger par excellence.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A masterpiece tour de force of crisp, sharp, suspenseful writing…It’s an awful cliché to say that ‘you won’t be able to put this book down,’ but cliché or not, it’s the truth.”—The Wall Street Journal
“The Day of the Jackal makes such comparable books as The Manchurian Candidate and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold seem like Hardy Boy mysteries.” —The New York Times
“Chillingly real...Rushing along with such passion that the reader himself seems to be traveling with 'the Jackal.' One of the best books of its type in a long time.” —Newsday
One of Bob Odenkirk's Book Recommendations: "The book that kept me up way too late." —Elle
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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. At that hour on March 11, 1963, in the main courtyard of the Fort d’Ivry a French Air Force colonel stood before a stake driven into the chilly gravel as his hands were bound behind the post, and stared with slowly diminishing disbelief at the squad of soldiers facing him twenty metres away. A foot scuffed the grit, a tiny release from tension, as the blindfold was wrapped around the eyes of Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, age thirty-five, blotting out the light for the last time. The mumbling of the priest was a helpless counterpoint to the crackling of twenty rifle bolts as the soldiers charged and cocked their carbines. Beyond the walls a Berliet truck blared for passage as some smaller vehicle crossed its path towards the centre of the city; the sound died away, masking the “Take your aim” order from the officer in charge of the squad. The crash of rifle fire, when it came, caused no ripple on the surface of the waking city, other than to send a flutter of pigeons skyward for a few moments. The single “whack” seconds later of the coup de grâce was lost in the rising din of traffic from beyond the walls. The death of the officer, leader of a gang of Secret Army Organisation killers who had sought to shoot the President of France, was to have been an end—an end to further attempts on the President’s life. By a quirk of fate it marked a beginning, and to explain why, it is first necessary to explain why a riddled body came to hang from its ropes in the courtyard of the military prison outside Paris on that March morning. . . . The sun had dropped at last behind the palace wall, and long shadows rippled across the courtyard bringing a welcome relief. Even at 7 in the evening of the hottest day of the year the temperature was still twenty-five degrees centigrade. Across the sweltering city the Parisians piled querulous wives and yelling children into cars and trains to leave for the weekend in the country. It was August 22, 1962, the day a few men waiting beyond the city boundaries had decided that the President, General Charles de Gaulle, should die. While the city’s population prepared to flee the heat for the relative cool of the rivers and beaches, the cabinet meeting behind the ornate façade of the Elysée Palace continued. Across the tan gravel of the front courtyard, now cooling in welcome shadow, sixteen black Citroen DS sedans were drawn up nose to tail, forming a circle round three-quarters of the area. The drivers, lurking in the deepest shade close to the west wall where the shadows had arrived first, exchanged the inconsequential banter of those who spend most of their working days waiting on their masters’ whims. There was more desultory grumbling at the unusual length of the Cabinet’s deliberations, until a moment before 7:30 a chained and bemedalled usher appeared behind the plate glass doors at the top of the six steps of the palace and gestured towards the guards. Among the drivers, half-smoked Gauloises were dropped and ground into the gravel. The security men and guards stiffened in their boxes beside the front gate and the massive iron grilles were swung open. The chauffeurs were at the wheels of their limousines when the first group of ministers appeared behind the plate glass. The usher opened the doors and the members of the Cabinet straggled down the steps exchanging a few last-minute wishes for a restful weekend. In order of precedence the sedans eased up to the base of the steps, the usher opened the rear door with a bow, the Ministers climbed into their respective cars and were driven away past the salutes of the Garde Républicaine and out into Faubourg Saint Honoré. Within ten minutes they were gone. Two long black DS 19 Citroens remained in the yard, and each slowly cruised to the base of the steps. The first, flying the pennant of the President of the French Republic, was driven by François Marroux, a police driver from the training and headquarters camp of the Gendarmerie Nationale at Satory. His silent temperament had kept him apart from the joking of the ministerial drivers in the courtyard; his ice-cold nerves and ability to drive fast and safely kept him de Gaulle’s personal driver. Apart from Marroux, the car was empty. Behind it the second DS 19 was also driven by a gendarme from Satory. At 7:45 another group appeared behind the glass doors, and again the men on the gravel stiffened to attention. Dressed in his habitual double-breasted charcoal grey suit and dark tie, Charles de Gaulle appeared behind the glass. With old-world courtesy he first ushered Madame Yvonne de Gaulle through the doors, then took her arm to guide her down the steps to the waiting Citroen. They parted at the car, and the President’s wife climbed into the rear seat of the front vehicle on the left-hand side. The General got in behind her from the right. Their son-in-law, Colonel Alain de Boissieu, then chief-of-staff of the Armoured and Cavalry units of the French Army, checked that both rear doors were safely shut, then took his place in the front beside Marroux. In the second car two others from the group of functionaries who had accompanied the presidential couple down the steps took their seats. Henri d’Jouder, the hulking bodyguard of the day, a Kabyle from Algeria, took the front seat beside the driver, eased the heavy revolver under his armpit, and slumped back. From then on his eyes would flicker incessantly, not over the car in front, but over the pavements and street corners as they flashed past. After a last word to one of the duty security men to be left behind, the second man got into the back alone. He was Commissaire Jean Ducret, chief of the Presidential Security Corps. From beside the west wall two white-helmeted motorcyclists gunned their engines into life and rode slowly out of the shadows towards the gate. Before the entrance they stopped ten feet apart and glanced back. Marroux pulled the first Citroen away from the steps, swung towards the gate, and drew up behind the motorcycle outriders. The second car followed. It was 7:50 p.m. Again the iron grille swung open, and the small cortege swept past the ramrod guards into the Faubourg Saint Honoré and from there into the Avenue de Marigny. From under the chestnut trees a young man in a white crash helmet astride a scooter watched the cortege pass, then slid away from the curb and followed. Traffic was normal for an August weekend, and no advance warning of the President’s departure had been given. Only the whine of the motorcycle sirens told traffic cops on duty of the approach of the convoy, and they had to wave and whistle frantically to get the traffic stopped in time. The convoy picked up speed in the tree-darkened avenue and erupted into the sunlit Place Clemenceau, heading straight across towards the Pont Alexandre III. Riding in the slipstream of the official cars, the scooterist had little difficulty in following. After the bridge Marroux followed the motorcyclists into the Avenue General Gallieni and thence into the broad Boulevard des Invalides. The scooterist at this point had his answer—the route de Gaulle’s convoy would take out of Paris. At the junction of the Boulevard des Invalides and the rue de Varennes he eased back the screaming throttle and swerved towards a corner cafe. Inside, taking a small metal token from his pocket, he strode to the back of the cafe where the telephone was situated and placed a local call. Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry waited in the suburb of Meudon. He was married, with three children, and he worked in the Air Ministry. Behind the conventional façade of his professional and family life, he nurtured a deep bitterness towards Charles de Gaulle, who, he believed, had betrayed France and the men who in 1958 had called him back to power by yielding Algeria to the Algerian nationalists. He personally had lost nothing through the loss of Algeria, and it was not personal consideration that motivated him. In his own eyes he was a patriot, a man convinced that he would be serving his beloved country by slaying the man he thought had betrayed her. Many thousands shared his views at that time, but few in comparison were fanatical members of the Secret Army Organisations, which had sworn to kill de Gaulle and bring down his government. Bastien-Thiry was such a man. He was sipping a beer when the call came through. The barman passed him the phone, then went to adjust the television set at the other end of the bar. Bastien-Thiry listened for a few seconds, muttered, “Very good, thank you,” into the mouthpiece, and set it down. His beer was already paid for. He strolled out of the bar onto the pavement, took a rolled newspaper from under his arm, and carefully unfolded it twice. Across the street a young woman let drop the lace curtain of her first-floor flat, and, turning to the twelve men who lounged about the room, she said, “It’s route number two.” The five youngsters, amateurs at the business of killing, stopped twisting their hands and jumped up. The other seven were older and less nervous. Senior among them in the assassination attempt and second-in-command to Bastien-Thiry was Lieutenant Alain Bougrenet de la Tocnaye, an extreme right-winger from a family of landed gentry. He was thirty-five, married, with two children. The most dangerous man in the room was Georges Watin, aged thirty-nine, a bulky-shouldered, square-jowled OAS fanatic, originally an agricultural engineer from Algeria, who in two years had emerged again as one of the OAS’s most dangerous trigger-men. From an old leg-wound he was known as “the Limp.” When the girl announced the news, the twelve men trooped downstairs via the back of the building to a side street where six vehicles, all stolen or hired, had been parked. The time was 7:55. Bastien-Thiry had personally spent days preparing the site of the assassination, measuring angles of fire, speed and distance of the moving vehicles, and the degree of firepower necessary to stop them. The place he had chosen was a long straight road called the Avenue de la Libération, leading up to the main crossroads of Petit-Clamart. The plan was for the first group containing the marksmen with their rifles to open fire on the President’s car some two hundred yards before the crossroads. They would shelter behind an Estafette van parked by the roadside, beginning their fire at a very shallow angle to the oncoming vehicles. By Bastien-Thiry’s calculations, 150 bullets should pass through the leading car by the time it came abreast of the van. With the presidential car brought to a stop, the second OAS group would sweep out of a side road to blast the security police vehicle at close range. Both groups would spend a few seconds finishing off the presidential party, then spring for the three getaway vehicles in another side street. Bastien-Thiry himself, the thirteenth of the party, would be a lookout man. By 8:05 the groups were in position. A hundred yards on the Paris side of the ambush, Bastien-Thiry stood idly by a bus stop with his newspaper. Waving the newspaper would give the signal to Serge Bernier, leader of the first commando, who would be standing by the Estafette. He would pass the order to the gunmen spread-eagled in the grass at his feet. Bougrenet de la Tocnaye would drive the car to intercept the security police, with Watin the Limp beside him clutching a submachine gun.
As the safety catches flicked off beside the road at Petit-Clamart, General de Gaulle’s convoy cleared the heavier traffic of central Paris and reached the more open avenues of the suburbs. Here the speed increased to nearly sixty miles per hour. As the road opened out, François Marroux flicked a glance at his watch, sensed the testy impatience of the old General behind him, and pushed the speed up even higher. The two motorcycle outriders dropped back to take up station at the rear of the convoy. De Gaulle never liked such ostentation sitting out in front and dispensed with them whenever he could. In this manner the convoy entered the Avenue de la Division Leclerc at Petit-Clamart. It was 8:17 p.m. A mile up the road Bastien-Thiry was experiencing the effects of his big mistake. He would not learn of it until told by the police as he sat months later in Death Row. Investigating the timetable of his assassination, he had consulted a calendar to discover that dusk fell on August 22 at 8:35, seemingly plenty late enough even if de Gaulle was late on his usual schedule, as indeed he was. But the calendar the Air Force colonel had consulted related to 1961. On August 22, 1962, dusk fell at 8:10. Those twenty-five minutes were to change the history of France. At 8:18 Bastien-Thiry discerned the convoy hurtling down the Avenue de la Libération towards him at seventy miles per hour. Frantically he waved his newspaper. Across the road and a hundred yards down, Bernier peered angrily through the gloom at the dim figure by the bus stop. “Has the colonel waved his paper yet?” he asked of no one in particular. The words were hardly out of his mouth when he saw the shark-nose of the President’s car flash past the bus stop and into vision. “Fire,” he screamed to the men at his feet. They opened up as the convoy came abreast of them, firing with a ninety-degree layoff at a moving target passing them at seventy miles per hour. That the car took twelve bullets at all was a tribute to the killers’ marksmanship. Most of those hit the Citroen from behind. Two tires shredded under the fire, and although they were self-sealing tubes the sudden loss of pressure caused the speeding car to lurch and go into a front-wheel skid. That was when François Marroux saved de Gaulle’s life. While the ace marksman, ex-legionnaire Varga, cut up the tires, the remainder emptied their magazines at the disappearing rear window. Several slugs passed through the bodywork, and one shattered the rear window, passing within a few inches of the presidential nose. In the front seat Colonel de Boissieu turned and roared, “Get down,” at his parents-in-law. Madame de Gaulle lowered her head towards her husband’s lap. The General gave vent to a frosty “What, again?” and turned to look out of the back window.
Product details
- ASIN : B0081KZ20E
- Publisher : G.P. Putnam's Sons; Reprint edition (September 4, 2012)
- Publication date : September 4, 2012
- Language : English
- File size : 1735 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 434 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #76,032 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Frederick Forsyth is the author of a number of bestselling novels including The Day of the Jackel, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative and The Fourth Protocol. He lives in Hertfordshire, England. www.frederickforsyth.co.uk
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This is a classic - a great experience. I'm frequently smiling at the smart and unexpected actions. Leading the investigation is homicide detective Lebel. He is short, rumpled, quiet, unassuming, and blinks a lot when criticized. There are no scenes with his wife, but we hear that he is henpecked. Don't expect a charismatic hero. This is a humble man doing smart things in a methodical manner. I loved the nuanced characters. I was sympathetic to some of the bad guys and disliked some of the good guys. Jackal is a bad guy but he does not humiliate or do despicable things to people. He just kills anyone who threatens him. I admired his intelligence and competence. The OAS guys are bad guys, but they have idealistic motives, even though warped. They're not out to kill masses of people. They just want to kill one guy.
Government officials learn that the OAS hired a foreigner to assassinate the French president. The killer's code name is Jackal. They cannot talk to the OAS because they are hiding in another country. Lebel is brought in to lead the search to find the Jackal. I'm shaking my head thinking where does he start? What can he do? And then I am so impressed with the method of investigating and uncovering clues. On the other side, I was impressed and intrigued with many smart things the Jackal did.
CLASSIC WRITING STYLE:
I love this method of writing - classic. There is no jumping around in time. Things are told in a logical and linear method. In many cases when a new character is introduced, a short background is given showing his motivations, and then the current day story continues. This works well. And all scenes have natural endings. The author doesn't stop a scene in the middle of a sentence. (Stephen King are you listening?)
MAINTAINING SUSPENSE:
I am frequently annoyed with other authors who leave scenes before a natural end and jump to another character, place, or time. For example, Mary walks into a room, hears a noise, and is hit. The next sentence is about another character in another place. This is not story suspense. It's manipulation to create artificial suspense. I am angry at the author. My anger takes me out of the story. Forsyth does suspense perfectly in this book. For example, Lebel gets a clue about the Jackal. I feel hopeful. POV switches to Jackal who is doing things according to plan. He hears that Lebel learned something, so Jackal changes his plan and does something different. I'm impressed. POV then switches to Lebel's guys who arrive at Jackal's location but don't find him because Jackal left an hour earlier. I'm thinking oh no what will they do next? Even though the POV is switching, the actions flow in a logical time line. The result is a chess game - watching each player respond and make his next move. This is a perfect way to maintain suspense throughout the book.
CAUTION MINOR SPOILER:
I had only one complaint. I wanted to see revenge and consequences for Jacqueline and the man she seduced. It probably happened but I didn't get to see it.
END SPOILER.
NARRATOR:
The narrator Simon Prebble did a fine job.
DATA:
Unabridged audiobook reading time: 13 hrs and 21 mins. Swearing language: moderate, only two or three times. Sexual language: mild. Number of sex scenes: about 5, mostly referred to, not much detail. Setting: primarily 1963 France, England, Belgium, and Italy. Book copyright: 1971. Genre: suspense thriller. Ending: Excellent and feel good.
The novel is structured in a way to first give a picture of the two sides, and then give a timeline for the events to follow. The first part of the novel, Anatomy of a Plot, gives background into OAS organization, their hatred for de Gaulle, and their efforts to find the perfect assassin to do the job. Deciding on a man who is only referred by the codename “The Jackal”, they set in motion the preparations for this attempt. Part two, Anatomy of a Manhunt, goes into the police forces’ attempts to identify and unmask this assassin, and figure out how, where and when he will strike. This builds to the final part, Anatomy of a Kill, which is a final confrontation between the two sides.
I was quite impressed with the way the author is able to present the two alternating plot lines to create a building sense of tension. When deputy commissioner Claude Lebel is appointed to take on this massive case, there is a sense of frustration and tension within their own police investigation and manhunt, as they butt heads on how to identify and stop the Jackal. Lebel has to get inside the killer’s head in order to figure out how he thinks and what his next move is and create a mental timeline. As we follow Lebel and his team’s relentless pursuit of this nameless figure, we also follow the Jackal’s. The alternating movements really help to build to one brilliant, tension-filled conclusion, especially as each side tries to outmaneuver the other.
I though it interesting in that the two sides are presented in a neutral manner. The narrator does not favor one side over another, but gives insight into both assassin and police perspectives. The Jackal is presented as cold and calculating, yet suave (think James Bond as an assassin). He loves his women, and his loves his gadgets. He loves to life the good life (fine wine, good food, expensive hotels) once he has his priorities have been met. On the other side, Lebel is sort of a bumbling, imperfect, yet quite intellectual figure. He may be the perfect fit for this job because of his imperfections, however; he seems to see into things in a true light because of his detective-like knowledge. In short, he knows what he is up against: “A real gentleman, thought Lebel, is as dangerous as a snake. They are always the worst kind for the policeman, the real gentleman. No one ever suspects them.”
The Day of the Jackal is a gripping suspense and thriller, and finishes with quite a face-paced race to the finish in the final pages.
Top reviews from other countries
The book manages to captivate the reader and you keep wondering on who's side are you on - the immaculate planner or the discerning, unassuming detective who's career is on the line. And till the end of the book, the reader is kept guessing on whether the assassination would happen or not and there is no time to think on what you really want to happen coz you will be too busy turning the pages with xx wpm to see what happens. The day of the jackal is over.
Reviewed in India on April 19, 2023
The book manages to captivate the reader and you keep wondering on who's side are you on - the immaculate planner or the discerning, unassuming detective who's career is on the line. And till the end of the book, the reader is kept guessing on whether the assassination would happen or not and there is no time to think on what you really want to happen coz you will be too busy turning the pages with xx wpm to see what happens. The day of the jackal is over.
Le style est net, précis, efficace, on y suit le parcours d'un assassin professionnel qui déjoue toutes les polices de France afin de tuer De Gaulle.
Il est sous contrat avec des tordus de l'OAS qui ne supportent pas que De Gaulle ai rendu l'Algérie.
C'est donc toute une époque, un contexte.
Ici pas de téléphones portables ou de drones, mais plutôt des coups de fil en attente dans des petits hôtels de province, des fausses identités et des grimages "classiques" etc...
Il y a un charme et un romantisme comparable aux vieux films d'espionnage.
C'est royal.
Set in France of 1963, the French Government is locked in a struggle against an organisation of former soldiers and colonials who feel betrayed by DeGaulle's decision to grant Algeria independence the year before. Riddled with informers, and with six failed attempts on DeGaulle's life, they decide to hire a professional assassin to achieve their aim. Through sheer chance the plot is uncovered, and the French set out to quarry their prey. But their prey is a predator too, and outwits them at every turn.
Forsyth adopted a factual tone for the book, as though documenting historical fact. So well written is the book, one could believe the plot really did happen. Although we never learn the adversary's name, the character development is so skilful its hard not to urge him on, whilst at the same time cheering his hunter, Inspector Claude Lebel. Packed with innoculous fine detail that brings the story to life off the page, fleshing out characters, landscape, tastes, and the society of the time. And the occasional whisper of humour, as Forsyth cocks a snook at The Establishment of both France and Britain.
Even today, in 2019, this book stands the test of time. As an aside, the method of obtaining a false passport in 1963 hadnt changed when Forsth wrote the novel in 1971. It was still a viable method in the late 90's, and even - to Forsyth's atonishment - as late as 2004; read the article he wrote for a major UK national.
A thrilling book, a real page turner. And the film adaptation isnt bad either.* 11/10 for one of my favourite 'old friends' from a superlative author. And if you want more, i highly recommend The Veteran. The title story is an outstanding descendant of The Jackal.
*The Day of the Jackal,, starring Edward Fox, who pulls off the character with chilling conviction, and not the second-hand copy Bruce Willis action flick The Jackal.