“Jackal” Still Entrances at 50

British journalist-turned-author Frederick Forsyth was just 33 years old when his first novel, a political thriller titled The Day of the Jackal, originally saw print. The book was released in the United Kingdom on June 7, 1971, by Hutchinson & Company, and on August 6, 1971—50 years ago today—in the United States, by Viking Press.

Most people know the gist of the story, if not from having read Forsyth’s yarn, then from watching the 1973 film it engendered. But here’s Wikipedia’s synopsis, for those still in the dark:

The Day of the Jackal (1971) is a thriller novel by English author Frederick Forsyth about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS [Organisation Armée Secrète], a French dissident paramilitary organisation, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France.

The novel received admiring reviews and praise when first published in 1971, and it received a 1972 Best Novel Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The novel remains popular, and in 2003 it was listed on the BBC's survey [to identify Britain’s best-loved novels] The Big Read.

The OAS, as described in the novel, did exist and the book opens with an accurate depiction of the attempt to assassinate de Gaulle led by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry on 22 August 1962; the subsequent plot is fiction.

Much of the novel concerns the tense manhunt for de Gaulle’s anonymous English assassin, before he can fulfill his assignment.

The Hindu, an English-language newspaper in India, supplies some background on Forsyth and the events that inspired his book:

When Frederick Forsyth landed in Paris in May 1962 as a 24-year-old correspondent for Reuters, his boss gave him one job—to shadow Charles de Gaulle. The President was on the assassination list after France’s Algeria tangle and troops of media tailed him wherever he went. At night after work, as the story goes, Forsyth would hang out at the bars frequented by the underworld, the police and OAS … sympathisers, staring at the wall and pretending to not understand French. Picking up the chatter about concentric rings of security around the president, he was convinced that only a complete outsider could even think of taking a shot. Later, he would create such a man and call him the Jackal. …

In August 1962, the OAS came closest to killing de Gaulle, as Forsyth recalls in his [2015] memoirs, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue. As the President’s Citreon DS 19 passed a road on the way to Orly airport, it came under fire from OAS men. One bullet whizzed past de Gaulle’s nose but the driver managed to drop him, his wife and son-in-law safely to the airport. De Gaulle’s only comment after the shootout was: ‘Ils ne savant pas tirer’ (‘They can’t shoot straight’). This real-life incident makes it to the book as a build-up to the story of the fictional attempt by a hired killer.

De Gaulle survived several attempts on his life; he resigned from office in 1969, and died a year later at home.

Forsyth’s most famous novel has seen multiple printings, in both hardcover and paperback, since its debut half a century ago. Most of the books’ covers have been tediously similar, focusing on gunsight cross-hair patterns, but even then a few stand out. The dust jacket atop this post, for instance, comes from the initial Hutchinson version; the one immediately below is Viking’s original front.

The two paperback releases below are typical of what bookstore patrons have seen of The Day of the Jackal. The cover on the left appeared on the 1972 Bantam edition. On the right is Corgi’s 1972 version, with artwork by Stanislaw Fernandes.