The Day of the Jackal, written by Frederick Forsyth and published in 1971, is widely regarded as a classic. Critics often mention it in lists of the top ten spy novels of all time. Although not strictly a spy novel, as neither of the protagonists is a spy, it involves clandestine plots, and political assassination is a perennial spy-thriller theme.
The Day of the Jackal: Title
The title uses a classic title archetype, the Defining Moment. The whole novel heads towards and culminates on the day when the Jackal makes his attempt to assassinate President de Gaulle.
(For more on titles, see How to Choose a Title For Your Novel)
The Day of the Jackal: Logline
In 1960s France, die-hard imperialists hire a professional assassin to kill President de Gaulle. When the French discover the plot, the assassin must stay one step ahead of a brilliant French detective in order to complete his mission and change history.
(For more on loglines, see The Killogator Logline Formula)
The Day of the Jackal: Plot Summary
Warning: Major spoilers are blacked out like this [blackout]secret[/blackout]. To view them, just select/highlight them.
Anatomy of a Plot
It’s 1962. The OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète or, in English, Secret Army Organisation) is a French militant group. It regards France’s president, General Charles de Gaulle, as a traitor because he has decided to grant Algeria independence. They attempt to kill de Gaulle in an ambush, but fail.
This failure prompts the OAS to realise that the French secret service has compromised their organisation. The only way they can kill de Gaulle is to hire a professional assassin who’s unknown to the French authorities. They find an assassin, codenamed ‘Jackal’. In return for completing the mission, the Jackal demands enough money to retire in luxury.
Having received payment, the Jackal prepares for the assassination. First, he buys false passports, then he travels to Belgium to commission a sniper rifle of unusual specification.
Anatomy of a Manhunt
The French secret service captures and tortures an OAS bodyguard. He knows a little about the plot, but not the identity of the assassin. President de Gaulle refuses to alter his routine. Instead, he orders the French police to stop the Jackal secretly, in order to avoid negative publicity.
The French Minister of the Interior assigns the best detective in France, Claude Lebel, to hunt the Jackal down.
Lebel contacts the British Special Branch. They theorise the Jackal may be the same man who assassinated the Dominican President, Rafael Trujillo. Rumour has it that the assassin’s name was Charles Calthrop, which sounds a bit like the French for Jackal, ‘chacal’. They find that a Charles Calthrop is living in London, although he is apparently on holiday in Scotland.
The Jackal enters France by car, with his gun hidden in the chassis. He gets word from the OAS that the French are looking for him but continues, anyway.
Special Branch detectives raid Calthrop’s flat, find his passport, and deduce that the Jackal must be using a false identity. Lebel comes close to apprehending the Jackal in the south of France, but thanks to his OAS contact, the Jackal evades him.
With the police on the lookout for him, the Jackal takes refuge in the château of a woman whom he seduces. When she finds his gun, he kills her and, assuming one of his two emergency identities, boards the train for Paris…
Anatomy of a Kill
Lebel [blackout]suspects someone is leaking information to the Jackal. He taps his superiors’ home phones and discovers the traitor. He also deduces that the Jackal has targeted de Gaulle on 25 August, the day the Allies liberated Paris from the Nazis, and the one day he can guarantee the president will be vulnerable.[/blackout]
The Jackal [blackout]eludes the desperate French manhunt by picking up a gay man, going back to his apartment, and then killing him.[/blackout]
On Liberation Day,[blackout] the Jackal disguises himself as a one-legged war veteran, carrying his rifle hidden in his crutch. He infiltrates the flats overlooking the area where De Gaulle is due to hand out medals.[/blackout]
Lebel [blackout]hears about the one-legged veteran and guesses the Jackal’s plan, seemingly too late. But the Jackal’s first shot misses when de Gaulle leans forward to kiss the veteran he has just given a medal. The Jackal scrambles to reload.[/blackout]
Lebel [blackout]arrives at the flat the Jackal is shooting from. The two men recognise each other. Lebel shoots the Jackal, killing him.[/blackout]
In London, the Special Branch [blackout]are examining Calthrop’s apartment when a man claiming to be Calthrop arrives. The Jackal wasn’t Calthrop. They bury the body in an unmarked grave, anonymous forever.[/blackout]
(For more on summarising stories, see How to Write a Novel Synopsis)
The Day of the Jackal: Alternative Cover
Most covers for The Day of the Jackal have used either jackals or views through sniper scopes. Instead, I took inspiration from the scene where the armourer lovingly describes to the Jackal how he filled the assassin’s bullets with mercury so they would explode inside the president’s head. I also quite liked the hint of the ‘bullet with your name on’ in the way Frederick Forsyth’s name is on the bullet.
(For more on designing novel covers, see How to Make a Book Cover)
The Day of the Jackal: Analysis
The Day of the Jackal has an archetypal Mission plot (see Spy Novel Plots).
The ‘Mission’ Plot
The Protagonist:
- Is given a mission to carry out by their Mentor.
- Will be opposed by the Antagonist as they try to complete the mission.
- Makes a plan to complete the Mission.
- Trains and gathers resources for the Mission.
- Involves one or more Allies in their Mission (Optionally, there is a romance sub-plot with one of the Allies).
- Attempts to carry out the Mission, dealing with further Allies and Enemies as they meet them.
- Is betrayed by an Ally or the Mentor (optionally).
- Narrowly avoids capture by the Antagonist (or is captured and escapes).
- Has a final confrontation with the Antagonist and completes (or fails to complete) the Mission.
The main difference from a standard mission plot is the use of a Villain Protagonist.
The Illusion of Reality
This novel shouldn’t work. We all know no-one assassinated Charles de Gaulle. How can we have a thriller where we know the end before it starts? The Day of the Jackal must fail. But it doesn’t.
So how does the novel succeed? How can it generate any suspense? It’s not a short novel. The answer is, because, like Firefox, it is a ‘howdunit’, part of the sub-genre of spy fiction I call the spy-procedural.
The reader follows the Jackal as he, amongst other things, obtains a passport under a false name, buys forged identity cards, scouts Paris for a sniper’s nest, and buys a customised hunting rifle. We are with him as he murders and seduces, tricks and kills his way into France, to Paris and finally into position to kill de Gaulle.
We watch the heavies as they kidnap and torture their opponents to discover the plot. And we follow the detectives as they ransack flats, hunt through files and set up roadblocks to stop the Jackal. Forsyth is almost a technothriller author, describing each action in great detail. In fact, Forsyth describes the process of acquiring a false passport using the birth certificate of a dead child so intricately that it’s now known as the ‘Day of the Jackal fraud’.
In short, Forsyth in his cool, detached style sets up an illusion of reality that makes the reader suspend disbelief. The reader feels they’re learning about a real killer, an actual plot, and a real manhunt. It’s that illusion of non-fiction that makes the novel work. This journalistic style is something Forsyth made his trademark in other stories like The Odessa File.
The Ticking Clock
Many of the chapters of The Day of the Jackal end with the author mentioning what day it is and how long until the assassination attempt. Forsyth also frequently mentions exactly how far behind the Jackal the police are. The gap starts as days, then hours, and finally comes down to minutes. It’s a skilful implementation of the ticking clock technique as discussed in my article Writing a Satisfying Ending to your Novel
The Ending
There are two problems with the ending.
First the Jackal, set up as a superb shot, an ice-cold killer who made an ‘impossible’ shot to kill President Trujillo and constantly shown as precise and calm, misses de Gaulle, for no good reason. To me, this is an anti-climax. Forsyth does his best to hide it by switching to the police running up the stairs, and then bringing the two protagonists together. It’s not quite a deus ex machina, but it is a weak denouement, because the only reason the Jackal fails and President de Gaulle survives is blind luck.
Second, the reappearance of Charles Calthrop seems like an ironic final twist, but on second thoughts it undercuts a lot of the plot. Did the police not look at the picture on Calthrop’s passport, the discovery of which was their breakthrough in the case, and compare it to the one on the fake passports? If they had, they would have been able to see they were not the same man.
MacGuffin
Charles de Gaulle in the novel is a Personified MacGuffin, in that the entire story is about the Jackal’s attempt to kill him and Lebel’s attempt to defend him, but he’s barely in the novel. As I argue in my article on MacGuffins, this is not necessarily a problem: Forsyth wants to concentrate on the mechanics of the assassination, not the personality of De Gaulle.
The Day of the Jackal: My Verdict
One of the best assassin novels and a great ‘spy-procedural’. A classic.
The Day of the Jackal: The Movie
A movie of The Day of the Jackal, directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox as the Jackal, was released in 1973. It’s a faithful copy of the novel and an excellent film in its own right, and Edward Fox makes a great Jackal, icy cool and deadly.
There are a few changes: the woman the Jackal seduces meets with Lebel before the Jackal arrives at her chateau. The explicitly gay pick up the Jackal uses to evade the Parisian police is only hinted at, with the Jackal meeting a man in a sauna who offers him a drink ‘back at his place’, with only subtle innuendo.
They also remade The Day of the Jackal in 1997, but The Jackal is such a travesty that it barely deserves a mention.
Want to Read or Watch It?
The Day of the Jackal novel is available on US Amazon and UK Amazon.
The movie is also available on US Amazon and UK Amazon
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