'The Day Of The Jackal'

Anatomy Of A Kill: 
a review of 'The Day Of The Jackal' by Frederick Forsyth

A professional killer is hired by dissidents to assassinate a French statesman. Alerted, the authorities set out to find the would-be assassin. Put simply, that manhunt is the subject of Frederick Forsyth's acclaimed novel, 'The Day of the Jackal'. What is truly 'novel' is that the author tells us - or rather, anatomises - the assassin's story, and in doing so, encourages in the reader a sense of sympathy, or at least fraternity, with the killer, if only fleeting. We are inside his head and by-stander to his nefarious machinations, and we cannot help but feel a sneaking admiration for his intelligence, guts and guile.

In the end, we, the readers, know that there must be a 'kill'. The question is not 'if' but 'when' - and more importantly, 'who'? The answer is, perhaps, predictable, but the ride to get there is no less thrilling, fascinating and enjoyable. That is why, among the popular thrillers of the last century, 'The Day of the Jackal' ranks as a genre classic, and represents Frederick Forsyth at his best. In this, his first novel, Forsyth produced a literary idiomatic icon, 'the Jackal', who mediated into reality and the common lexicon in the more pitiable form of Illich Ramirez Sanchez. The author's prose is at the high-quality end, and stylistically, this novel reminds me of some of the best of John le Carré, except that Forsyth has a refreshing directness and alacrity that most other espial and thriller writers of the time lacked. His style is fundamentally journalistic: he emphasises factoid and detail above character. The result is disturbing in that the narrative guides us, meticulously and matter-of-factly, through the plans, preparations and actions of a professional assassin, and Forsyth journalises the experience almost to the point that one might say this novel is amoral, even disgusting. But this 'method' approach does grip you.

I would suggest that while Forsyth's 'journalistic' literary attribute has not always served him well in his novels, in 'The Day of the Jackal' it works perfectly. By removing the dead weight of such awkward and flaccid things as human relationships, character and compassion, Forsyth creates - especially for the Anglophone reader - a kind of European 'hyper-reality' that is the epitome of English middle-class escapism. All the typical hooks and idioms are here: the sanguine and charming English country vicar; the false papers; the quaint, faintly amusing identikit shenanigans at various airports; the seedy Belgian backstreet underworld; the flash car speeding along Alpine mountain roads; the innocuous but ever-so-suspicious border guards; the astute but unlucky Parisian detectives chasing their quarry around the Hexagon; the obscure French country house and the wanton lady; and so on. The would-be assassin is a cold, unfeeling killer who also happens to be an English gentleman. His suits are expensively-tailored and he talks in the 'right' way, using his voice and projected manner - in that typical English way - to conceal his rustic and provincial insecurities. The various and crude juxtapositions work perfectly, precisely because Forsyth's apt journalistic grasp of the material makes it all so uncannily life-like, yet we know that the author is gently poking fun at us. There are facts here, but the story can only be fiction.