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Day of the Jackal
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Topeka Bindery (1999-10)
ISBN: 0808514091
EAN: 9780808514091
Dewey Decimal #: 823.914
School & Library Binding: 250 pages
Reading Level: Young Adult
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
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.
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Customer Reviews
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And an Exciting Day It Is!
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-08-21
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Fictional books about the hired assassin can be broken down into three basic tiers. From bottom up, there are the bad ones, the good ones, and, alone at the top, there is THE DAY OF THE JACKAL. Frederick Forsyth started his career off with a bang as sharp as any shot by the Jackal himself, an assassin paid half a million dollars to knock off Charles de Gaulle, President of France.
In the Jackal, Forsyth creates quite possibly the leanest killing machine on the printed page. Far from killing indiscriminately, the Jackal kills those he is paid to kill, and those poor saps whose deaths are necessary to achieve the final goal. Nothing more and nothing less. His grey eyes study the target as a scientist studies the dissected squirrel in the laboratory, approaching his job with pure, cool professionalism.
French Intelligence, having picked up on the plot to hire the Jackal, puts a detective on the hunt. The cat-and-mouse game that follows is exceptionally well sketched, with the Jackal keeping just a step (sometimes half a step) ahead of the police, all the while keeping his eye on the prize and planning methodically for the kill.
False identities, false leads, inside men, they're all here. The interrogations are so taut that one can almost smell the cigarette smoke filling the room. And the climax? Really good. THE DAY OF THE JACKAL lifted the standards for the political thriller and it is a standard that has rarely been matched even to this day.
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Archetypical page-turner
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-07-13
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is a very entertaining book, enjoyable for anyone interested in modern Western politics and "espionage," without the need for precise historical accuracy.
Forsyth's novel is pure fiction with a heavy dose of generally accurate non-fiction context. The setting is the unsettled political climate of 1963 France under De Gaulle. For a Western democracy, France was (and had long been) a politically unstable nation with a fidelity for its government that was as faithful as the legendary lust of the Frenchman (another myth . . .). Anyway, Forsyth's fiction is based on a plot to assassinate De Gaulle as promoted by the rebels in his army who are bitter about his abadonment of the Algerian colony. The rebels hire a shadowy professional British assassin who insists on working alone, and for big dollars. To stop him, the best of French intelligence is devoted to a continential manhunt to find a man who has not yet committed any crime to investigate and who is otherwise unknown to everyone in the world (including the rebels who hired him). The rest is a great story presented masterfully by Forsyth.
This was a first work for Forsyth, and one can see where the writing could be better at times, but the plot and presentation are generally great. Forsyth's method is journalistic (fitting to the journalist that he was), and the tone is often like listening to Jack Webb's "Dragnet" or William Conrad voicing-over on "The Fugitive." For the most part, the facts are presented coldly, and at first this was a distraction. Later in the book, I realized that Forsyth was gradually, in his method, building characters who are just as rich as any in "pop" literature. For instance, the stolid details of the Jackal's dressing and lunching habits were, I thought at first, mere details to fill the imagination. In fact, Forsyth was presenting, without explicit comment, a picture of this mysterious man as one who so enjoyed the "finer" things and the jet-set lifestyle that he would do and risk anything for the wealth that he needed to support his desires.
I read this book in the summertime - it is that kind of book - the perfect companion to a lazy day with iced tea or a late night with the air conditioner. A classic in the modern spy genre.
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Not Free SF Reader
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-10-24
Mythological assassin vs detective.
Mythological in the sense that he has a fancy name tying in to the history surrounding that particular assassin.
In this case, some perhaps not so nice people want a French leader removed, and haven't managed it themselves, so they bring in an outside expert.
On the other side is a detective trying to track him down.
An excellent example of tense spy thriller writing of the time, by one of its foremost proponents.
4.5 out of 5
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A killer ending.
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-08-06
I usually don't describe books as something "I couldn't put down" but this is an exception. "The Day of The Jackal" is a page-turning thriller from start to finish.
Frederick Forsyth puts his keen newsman's eye and pen to describing the intracacies and frustrations of police work. The author builds the French assassination plot/worldwide manhunt into a crescendo before making one final U-turn that leaves you knowing there was more to the story.
I could write a book about the ending itself but I'll resist doing that here so as not to spoil things for those who haven't read the book.
I'm tempted to look for answers in "The Odessa File" (Forsyth's other famous novel) since Odessa (a post-World War II Nazi SS diaspora society) is mentioned in "Jackal." Yet the Detective Lebel in me suspects that most of the answers are tucked inside the taut sentences of "The Day of the Jackal."
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Forsyth at full force
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-08-02
After many failed attempts to assassinate Charles de Gaulle by the local French militant organization, an outside professional (the Jackal) is hired. The way in which Forsyth puts together a story, it has us even rooting for the assassins.
Forsyth's observant mind is at full force: with detailed detective work and the assassin's planning stages. Wonderful visualization and knowledge of the French culture and architecture. My only gripe is the French dialect slows down the reading pace. This is a complete and well thought out novel.
Wish you well
Scott
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Retail Price: $17.55
Amazon.com's Price:$15.84
That's 10% Off!
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