You’ve probably seen the movie. Or maybe the new TV series. But who wrote Day of the Jackal and actually started this whole obsession with professional assassins?
Frederick Forsyth.
That’s the name. He wasn’t some career novelist sitting in a cozy library with a pipe. When he wrote this book, he was basically broke, hiding out, and relying on a life story that reads more like a Bond script than a biography. He wrote the entire manuscript in thirty-five days. Just over a month. He used a portable typewriter and a sheer, desperate need to pay his bills.
It’s wild to think about now, but back in 1970, nobody wanted this book. Forsyth got rejected by almost every major publisher in London. They told him it had no suspense. Why? Because everyone already knew Charles de Gaulle—the target in the book—wasn’t actually assassinated in real life. They thought readers wouldn't care about a "failed" mission.
They were wrong.
The Man Behind the Manuscript
Frederick Forsyth didn’t just guess how mercenaries or spies worked. He knew. Before he ever sat down to type out the story of "The Jackal," he was a youngest-ever pilot in the Royal Air Force. He was twenty-one.
Later, he became a journalist for Reuters and the BBC. This is where things get gritty. He was sent to cover the Biafran War in Nigeria. While he was there, he saw things the British government preferred he hadn't. He ended up getting so deep into the local politics and the plight of the Biafran people that he essentially went rogue. He quit the BBC (or was pushed, depending on who you ask) and stayed in the middle of a war zone as a freelance reporter.
He was living on the edge.
When he finally came back to England, he had no job and no money. He decided to write a novel based on an idea he’d had while stationed in Paris years earlier. He remembered the real-life attempts on French President Charles de Gaulle’s life by the OAS, a right-wing paramilitary group angry about Algeria’s independence.
He wondered: what if they hired a professional? Someone outside their circle?
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That's the "Jackal."
Why The Day of the Jackal Changed Everything
Before Forsyth, thrillers were often about "gentleman spies" or over-the-top adventures. Who wrote Day of the Jackal mattered because that person brought "procedural" writing to the mainstream.
Forsyth wrote it like a journalism piece.
He explains, in painstaking detail, how to get a fake passport by looking for the gravestone of a dead infant who would have been your age. He explains how to commission a custom sniper rifle that can be broken down and hidden inside a stainless steel crutch.
It was so realistic that it actually caused security problems.
For years after the book came out, passport offices around the world had to change their application processes because people were actually using "the Forsyth method" to create false identities. The "Jackal" wasn't a superhero. He was a cold, calculating technician.
The Research was Real
Forsyth has admitted in various interviews, including his autobiography The Outsider, that he didn't make much up. He knew how the French secret service, the SDECE, operated. He knew how the underworld in Brussels worked.
He once famously said that if he couldn't verify a detail, he wouldn't include it. This obsessive commitment to "the how" is why the book still feels modern today. You aren't just reading a story; you're getting a manual on 1960s international assassination.
The Struggle to Get Published
If you're a writer, this part hurts.
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Forsyth took his 140,000-word manuscript to several publishers. They all passed. The common critique was that the book lacked tension. They argued that because De Gaulle was alive and well in 1970, the ending was spoiled.
Eventually, Harold Harris at Hutchinson took a gamble. He gave Forsyth a tiny advance—reports say it was around £500.
The book became a gargantuan hit. It won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. It was turned into a 1973 film by Fred Zinnemann that is still considered a masterpiece of pacing. It didn't matter that the reader knew the outcome. The "how" was more seductive than the "if."
The Legacy of the Jackal
The influence of Forsyth’s work is everywhere. Without him, we likely don't get Tom Clancy. We don't get the hyper-detailed "tech-thriller."
He created a template:
- A nameless (mostly) protagonist.
- Parallel timelines between the hunter and the hunted.
- Technical breakdowns of weaponry and logistics.
- A "no-nonsense" prose style that avoids flowery metaphors.
Interestingly, Forsyth himself was later revealed to have worked with MI6. In 2015, he finally confirmed what many had suspected for decades: during his time as a journalist in Biafra, Rhodesia, and East Germany, he was providing information to British intelligence.
He wasn't just a guy who wrote about spies. He was a guy who was around spies.
Actionable Insights for Thriller Fans
If you're looking to dive deeper into the world of the man who wrote Day of the Jackal, don't just stop at his most famous book.
- Read The Dogs of War: This is Forsyth's take on African mercenaries. It's arguably even more detailed than Jackal and was reportedly used as a "how-to" guide for a real-life attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea years later.
- Check out The Odessa File: It deals with the hunt for Nazi war criminals in the 1960s. Again, Forsyth mixes real historical figures with fiction so seamlessly you’ll be Googling names every five minutes.
- Watch the 1973 film: Avoid the 1997 Bruce Willis version if you want the spirit of the book. The original film follows the book’s procedural "coldness" perfectly.
- Explore the 2024 series: If you want to see how the "Jackal" concept adapts to the age of facial recognition and cyber-surveillance, the new Eddie Redmayne version offers a fascinating comparison to Forsyth’s analog original.
To understand the thriller genre, you have to understand Forsyth. He took the "thriller" out of the realm of fantasy and put it into the streets of Paris, using the cold, hard tools of a reporter. He proved that facts, when arranged correctly, are much scarier than fiction.
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Deep Dive into the "Forsyth Method"
If you're curious about the technical accuracy that made the book famous, look at the passport scene. Forsyth describes a process known as "ghosting." In the 1960s, you could go to a churchyard, find a headstone of someone born roughly when you were but who died in infancy, and then request their birth certificate. Since the death record and birth record weren't linked in a centralized computer system back then, you could use that certificate to get a perfectly legal passport in a dead person's name.
It worked. It worked so well that the "Forsyth Method" became a known term in the UK Home Office. They eventually had to digitize and cross-reference records specifically to stop people from doing what a fictional assassin did in a paperback novel. That is the level of impact Frederick Forsyth had.
He didn't just write a book; he exposed a flaw in the system.
The Realism of the Sniper Rifle
The Jackal's gun wasn't some sci-fi laser. It was a modified .22 Magnum hunting rifle. Forsyth chose this because it was low-recoil and could be easily silenced. He described the "explosive" bullets filled with mercury—a detail that sparked endless debates among ballistics experts about whether such a thing would actually work as described (mercury is heavy and would likely throw off the flight path, but the "logic" in the book is terrifyingly sound).
This is why we still talk about him. He made the reader feel like an accomplice. You aren't just watching the Jackal; you're sitting in the workshop with him while he grinds down the firing pin.
Frederick Forsyth turned 87 in 2025. He's mostly retired from the "thriller" game now, claiming the world has become too high-tech for his brand of old-school investigative storytelling. But the "Jackal" lives on. Every time you watch a movie where a character carefully assembles a gadget or navigates a complex bureaucracy to disappear, you're seeing Forsyth's DNA.
He took the world of shadows and shined a very bright, very journalistic light on it.
What to do next
If you really want to appreciate the craft, go buy a physical copy of the book. Look at the way Forsyth structures the chapters. Notice how he never gives the Jackal a name, a backstory, or a "save the cat" moment to make him likable. He is a ghost.
Then, compare it to modern thrillers. You’ll notice how many authors try to copy his "just the facts" tone. Most fail because they don't have the reporting background he had.
Start with The Day of the Jackal, then move to The Fourth Protocol. It’s a masterclass in how to build tension without ever needing to exaggerate.
Forsyth proved that the most frightening thing isn't a monster; it's a very smart man with a plan and the patience to follow it.