He takes on a false identity, obtains a British passport, and travels to Brussels, where he pays a gunsmith to create a specialized sniper rifle. The OAS accepts his terms, giving him the codename “The Jackal.” The rest of Part 1 concerns the Jackal’s complex preparations for the assassination. Rodin, the OAS deputy, meets with the assassin, who demands $500,000 in exchange for his services. After several attempts to fend off the French secret service, the OAS decides that the only way to carry out its assassination successfully is to hire an independent assassin who is unknown to the agency.

After Bastien-Thiry’s arrest, the French government retaliates against the OAS in an underground skirmish, which it tries to keep under wraps. The attack is ostensibly motivated by de Gaulle’s decision to grant independence to the state of Algeria. The first part, “Anatomy of a Plot,” starts in 1962 in the aftermath of a failed attempt to kill de Gaulle made by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry. The Day of the Jackal is split into three parts and an epilogue.

It is loosely modeled after a real-life assassination attempt made on de Gaulle in the 1940s. Widely considered one of the best mysteries of the twentieth century, it received one of the genre’s highest honors, the Edgar Award for Best Novel, in 1972. The contractor races against two detectives commissioned by the French government, as well as the English Special Service, to complete his task.

The Day of the Jackal (1971), a thriller novel by English author Frederick Forsyth, follows an unnamed English assassin hired by a French paramilitary terrorist organization called the OAS to kill France’s President, Charles de Gaulle.

Day of the jackal author