The Day of the Jackal
LC Class | PZ4.F7349 Day3 PR6056.O699 |
The Day of the Jackal (1971) is a
The novel received admiring reviews and praise when first published in 1971, and it received a 1972 Best Novel
The novel begins as
Plot summary
Part One: Anatomy of a Plot
The book begins in 1962 with the (historical) failed attempt on
The French secret service
Argoud's deputy, Lt-Col Marc Rodin, carefully examines what few options they have remaining and establishes that the only way to succeed in killing de Gaulle is to hire a professional mercenary from outside the organisation, who is completely unknown to both the French government and the OAS itself. After extensive inquiries, he contacts an English hitman (whose true identity is always unknown), who meets with Rodin and his two principal deputies in
The remainder of this part describes the Jackal's exhaustive preparations for the forthcoming project. He first acquires a legitimate British passport under a fake name, "Alexander Duggan", which he intends to use for most of his operation. He then steals the passports of two foreign tourists visiting London who superficially resemble him for use as contingency identities. Masquerading as Duggan, the Jackal travels to
. He also acquires a set of forged French identity papers from a professional forger. The latter makes the mistake of attempting to blackmail him, for which the Jackal kills him and locks his body in a large trunk where he determines it will not be found for a considerable time. After exhaustively researching a series of books and articles by, and about, de Gaulle, the Jackal travels to Paris to reconnoitre the most favourable spot and the best possible day for the assassination.Following a series of armed robberies in France, the OAS is able to deposit the first half of the Jackal's fee in his
Roger Frey, the French Minister of the Interior, organises a conference of the heads of the French security authorities. Because Rodin and his men are in a foreign hotel under heavy guard, kidnapping them for interrogation will be impossible (unless it is achieved through a commando-style operation), nor can they be assassinated. The rest of the meeting is at a loss to suggest how to proceed, until a Commissioner of the Police Judiciaire reasons that their first and most essential objective is to establish the Jackal's true identity, which is something that he insists is "pure detective work". When Frey asks him to suggest the best detective in France, he volunteers his own deputy commissioner: Claude Lebel.
Part Two: Anatomy of a Manhunt
Granted special emergency powers to conduct his investigation, Lebel does everything possible to uncover the Jackal's identity. He first calls upon his old boy network of foreign intelligence and police contacts to inquire if they have any records of a top-class political assassin. Most of the inquiries are fruitless, but in the United Kingdom, the matter is eventually passed on to the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, and another veteran detective, Superintendent Bryn Thomas.
A search through Special Branch's records turns up nothing. However, one of Thomas's subordinates suggests that if the assassin were an Englishman, but primarily operated abroad, he would most probably come to the attention of the
Thomas is then surprised when he receives a summons in person to report to the Prime Minister (unnamed, but most probably intended to represent Harold Macmillan), who informs him that word of his inquiries has reached higher circles in the British government. Despite the enmity felt by much of the government against France in general and, more precisely, de Gaulle, the Prime Minister informs Thomas that de Gaulle is his friend, and that the assassin must be identified and stopped, with a limitless amount of resources, manpower or expenses at Thomas' disposal. Thomas is handed a commission similar to Lebel's, with temporary powers allowing him to override almost any other authority in the land. Checking out the name of Charles Calthrop, Thomas finds a match to a man living in London, said to be on holiday. While Thomas confirms that this Calthrop was indeed in the Dominican Republic at the time of Trujillo's death, he does not believe it justifies informing Lebel, until one of his junior detectives realises that the first three letters of his first name and surname form the French word for Jackal (i.e. "CHA-rles CAL-throp" forms the French word for Jackal, "Chacal").
Unknown to any member of the council in France, there is an OAS
Part Three: Anatomy of a Kill
Having failed to capture the Jackal at least twice, Lebel becomes suspicious of what the rest of the council label the killer's apparent "good luck", and has the telephones of all the members tapped, which leads him to discover the OAS female agent. The disgraced Air Force colonel withdraws from the meeting and subsequently submits his resignation. When Thomas checks out and identifies reports of stolen or missing passports in London in the preceding months, he closes in on the Jackal's remaining secondary identities. Meanwhile, the Jackal slips into a small hotel upon arriving in Paris (narrowly evading a police checkpoint as he does) disposes of his first emergency identity, and disguises himself as the owner of the second stolen passport.
During a council meeting on 22 August 1963, Lebel deduces that the killer has decided to target de Gaulle three days later on 25 August, which commemorates the liberation of Paris during World War II. It is, he realises, the one day of the year when de Gaulle can definitely be counted on to be in Paris and make a public appearance. De Gaulle also authorises Lebel to release the Jackal's most updated picture and name to the newspapers, identifying him as a wanted man. Believing the inquiry to be over, the Minister orchestrates a massive, citywide manhunt for the foreigner now that he can be publicly reported as a murderer, dismissing Lebel with hearty congratulations – but the killer eludes them yet again: slipping into a gay bar while masquerading as his second contingency identity, he gets himself picked up by a local man and taken to his flat, where he kills him after a news update reports that "Martin Schulberg" (whose identity the Englishman is using) is wanted for murder, and waits out the remaining days.
On the 24th, Roger Frey summons Lebel yet again and tells him that the Jackal still cannot be found. The detective listens to the details of the President's schedule and security arrangements, but can suggest nothing more helpful than that everyone "should keep their eyes open", much to the Minister's dismay. On the 25th itself, the Jackal, masquerading as a one-legged French war veteran, passes through the security checkpoints carrying his custom gun concealed in the sections of a crutch. He makes his way to an apartment building overlooking the Place du 18 Juin 1940 (in front of the soon-to-be-demolished façade of the Gare Montparnasse), where de Gaulle is presenting medals to a small group of Resistance veterans. As the ceremony begins, Lebel is walking around the street, questioning and re-questioning every police checkpoint. When he hears from one CRS guard about a one-legged veteran with a crutch, he realises what the Jackal's plan is, and rushes into the apartment building, calling for the patrol to follow him.
Having sneaked into a suitable apartment to shoot from, the Jackal prepares his weapon and takes aim at de Gaulle's head, but his first shot misses by a fraction of an inch when the President unexpectedly leans forward to
Epilogue
In London, the Special Branch are searching Calthrop's apartment when the real Charles Calthrop storms in and demands to know what they are doing. Once it is established that Calthrop truly has been on holiday in Scotland and is totally separate to the killer, the British are left to wonder "if the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then who the hell was he?"
The Jackal is buried in an unmarked grave in a Paris cemetery, officially recorded as "an unknown foreign tourist, killed in a car accident." Aside from a priest, a policeman, registrar and grave-diggers, the only other person attending the burial is Inspector Claude Lebel, who then leaves the cemetery to return home.
Origins
Over the three years immediately prior to his writing The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth spent most of his time in West Africa covering the
When Forsyth arrived in 1962, French President
Publishing history
Although Forsyth wrote The Day of the Jackal in 35 days in January and February 1970, it remained unpublished for almost a year-and-a-half thereafter as he sought a publisher willing to accept his unsolicited approximately 140,000-word manuscript. Four publishing houses rejected it between February and September because their editors believed a fictional account of the OAS hiring a British assassin in 1963 to kill Charles de Gaulle would not be commercially successful, given the fact that he had never been shot and, when the book was written, de Gaulle was in fact still alive and retired from public life.[13]
The editors told Forsyth that they felt that these well-known facts essentially abrogated the suspense of his fictional assassination plot against de Gaulle as readers would already know it would not and could not possibly have been successful.
The book's unexpected success in Britain soon attracted the attention of Viking Press in New York which quickly acquired the US publication rights for $365,000 (£100,000)—a then very substantial sum for such a work and especially for that of a first-time author. These fees (the equivalent of $2.7 million in 2023) were split equally between Hutchinson and Forsyth, which led the heretofore self-described "flat broke" author to observe later that he had "never seen money like it and never thought I would."[14][18] Just two months after its publication in the UK the 380-page clothbound Viking first edition was released in the US at $7.95 and with a distinctive jacket designed by noted American artist Paul Bacon.[20][21]
The US first edition's launch was considerably aided by two glowing reviews in the New York Times by senior daily book reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt three days before its release, and by the American mystery writer Stanley Bernard Ellin the week after.[22][23][N 1] In mid-October it reached No. 1 on the Times "Best Seller List" for fiction and by mid-December 136,000 copies of Viking's US edition were already in print.[24][25] Over two-and-a-half million copies were sold worldwide by 1975.[26] As in the UK, over forty years later The Day of the Jackal still remains in print in the US published now by Penguin Books (which acquired Viking in 1975) as a New American Library imprint.[27][28] Hundreds of other print, electronic, and audio editions have been produced around the world since 1971 with many more millions of copies now in print in both English and the thirty other languages to which it has been translated including Spanish, German, French, Russian, Turkish, Czech, Polish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Hebrew, Latvian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai.[8][20]
The Day of the Jackal was published in serial format in 1971 in both the
Film adaptations
- The film The Day of the Jackal was released in 1973, directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox as The Jackal, Michael Lonsdale as Lebel, and Derek Jacobi as Caron. It follows the novel rather faithfully although it has several cosmetic changes[30]
- An Indian film in Malayalam titled August 1 (1988), directed by Sibi Malayil, is loosely based on the novel. It stars Mammootty, Captain Raju and Sukumaran in pivotal roles.[31]
- A film titled The Jackal, directed by Michael Caton-Jones, was released in 1997. The film bears little resemblance to the plot of the novel or the original film, featuring an unnamed assassin (Bruce Willis) being hired by the Russian mafia to kill the First Lady of the United States. Both Zinnemann and Forsyth lobbied to have the film's name changed to disassociate it from Forsyth's novel.
Television adaptation
Sky and Peacock have ordered a television series adaptation of the novel, produced by Carnival Films and Sky Studios with Ronan Bennett as showrunner and Brian Kirk as director.[32] Eddie Redmayne will play the Jackal.[33]
Influence on later events
The method for acquiring a false identity and UK passport detailed in the book is often referred to as the "Day of the Jackal fraud" and remained a well known security loophole in the UK[34] until 2007.[35] The New Zealand Member of Parliament David Garrett claimed the novel's description of identity theft inspired him to create his own fake passport as a "youthful prank".[36] The incident further inflamed a national controversy over the law and order campaigner's criminal history.[37]
In 1975, the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos was dubbed "The Jackal" by The Guardian after one of its correspondents reportedly spotted the novel near some of the fugitive's belongings.[38]
A copy of the Hebrew translation of The Day of the Jackal was found in possession of Yigal Amir, the Israeli who in 1995 assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel.
Would-be assassin
See also
- Citroën DS
- Cordite, which the assassin ingests to appear ill
- The Jackal
Notes
- ^ "Regardless of whether [a] book was written by a new or established author, being positively reviewed [in the New York Times] significantly increased sales; a positive review generated between a 32% and 52% percent increase in demand." Berger, Jonah (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania), Sorensen, Alan T. (Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University), Rasmussen, Scott J. (Stanford University) "Positive Effects of Negative Publicity: When Negative Reviews Increase Sales". Marketing Science (Professional journal), Sept/Oct 2010 (Vol. 29, No. 5), pp. 815–827
References
- ^ "Fantastic Fiction.com The Day of the Jackal".
- ^ "BBC – The Big Read". BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 31 October 2012
- ^ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved 29 February 2024.
- ^ Yishau, Olukorede (30 November 2011). "Frederick Forsyth's Biafran Story". The Nation. Lagos, Nigeria. Archived from the original on 1 May 2012.
- ^ Aspinall, Terry (2010). "Soldiers of Fortune Mercenary Wars: Biafra 1966". Mercenary-Wars.net. Archived from the original on 12 January 2014. Retrieved 30 April 2013.
- ^ Forsyth, Frederick. "A Rather Undeserving Scribe (Author's Note)". The Day of the Jackal (New American Library ed.).
- ^ Vembu, Venkatesan (31 July 2010). "Interview with Frederick Forsyth". DNAIndia.com.
I'm mercenary: I wrote Day of the Jackal for money.
- ^ a b "The Day of the Jackal: Teacher's Notes Level 4" (PDF). Penguin Readers Teacher Support Programme. Penguin Books.
- Cable News Network. 15 April 2000. Archived from the originalon 4 April 2013. Retrieved 30 April 2013.
- ^ Cumming, Charles (3 June 2011). "The Day of the Jackal: The hit we nearly missed". The Guardian.
- ^ "Citroen helps de Gaulle survive assassination attempt". This Day in History. The History Channel. 22 August 1962.
- ^ Forsyth, Frederick (2015). The Outsider: My life in intrigue. New York: Putnam.
- ^ Gilbert, Harriet (October 2003). "Federick Forsyth - Day Of The Jackal". British Broadcasting Service. Retrieved 17 May 2024.
- ^ a b c Anderson, Hephzibah (31 July 2011). "Forsyth's Shadowy Jackal Celebrates 40 Years of Assassination: Interview" Bloomberg News.
- ^ "France Mourns de Gaulle: World Leaders to Attend a Service at Notre Dame". The New York Times, 11 November 1970. p. 1
- ^ Paratico, Angelico (24 February 2016). "The Day of the Jackal, 45 Years Ago". Beyond Thirty-Nine. Archived from the original on 27 February 2017. Retrieved 2 July 2022.
- ^ Forsyth, 2015
- ^ a b Brown, Helen "Frederick Forsyth: 'I had expected women to hate him. But no...'" The Daily Telegraph. 21 May 2011
- ^ The Day of the Jackal Original dustjacket ("Reprinted before publication") London: Hutchinson & Co. 1971
- ^ a b c Hulme, Emily "20th Century American Bestsellers: "The Day of the Jackal" Archived 29 July 2012 at the Wayback Machine University of Illinois
- ^ 1971 US First Edition Dustjacket Paul Bacon, Designer [dead link]
- ^ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (3 August 1971). "Want a Thriller? Here's One". The New York Times. p. 27.
- ^ Ellin, Stanley (15 August 1971). "Target: Le Grand Charles". The New York Times. p. BR3.
- ^ "Best Seller List" (Fiction) The New York Times Review of Books. 17 October 1971, p. 69
- ^ Publishers Weekly. Weekly issues from 16 August to 20 December 1971
- ^ Burke, Alice and James. "80 Years of Bestsellers, 1895–1975". New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1976
- ^ History of the Viking Press Archived 3 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine Viking Press. Penguin.com
- ^ The Day of the Jackal Viking Press. Penguin.com, 2013
- ^ 2011 "40th Anniversary Edition" Cover Random House (via Bloomberg)
- ^ The French Security services kidnaps the OSS Bodyguard while he is delivering mail instead of luring him back to France with a false report his daughter is dying; The Jackal goes to Genoa, Italy for his sniper rifle and forged ID Card instead of Belgium; while on the way to hiding out with the French aristocrat woman he has a car accident which almost derails his plans; he kills the woman after she reveals that the Police talked to her and that she recognized the car he was driving was stolen; the French Colonel who unwittingly tips off the Jackal commits suicide instead of resigning.
- ^ "Shaji Kailas starts Mammootty`s film". Sify. 12 October 2010.
- ^ Goldbart, Max (3 November 2022). "'The Day Of The Jackal' TV Adaptation Greenlit By Sky & Peacock With 'Top Boy' Showrunner Ronan Bennett Attached". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
- ^ White, Peter (21 March 2023). "Eddie Redmayne To Lead 'The Day Of The Jackal' Series For Peacock & Sky". Deadline Hollywood.
- ^ Dilley, Ryan (15 September 2003). "Has the Jackal passport scam had its day?". BBC News. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
- ^ "'Day of Jackal' identity scam ended". Metro. 4 March 2007. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
- NZPA. 15 September 2010. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
- Television New Zealand. 15 September 2010. Archived from the originalon 13 June 2011. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
- TheGuardian.com. 22 October 2010. Archived from the originalon 5 November 2013.
- ^ Chivers, C. j. (22 July 2005). "Georgian Admits Tossing Grenade Near Bush, but Provides No Motive". The New York Times.
External links
- Frederick Forsyth discusses The Day of the Jackal on the BBC World Book Club
- The Day of the Jackal at FactBehindFiction.com Archived 31 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- The Way of the Jackal Archived 9 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine