Rating: 
Summary: A perfect book
Review: A perfect spy book should be like this - with an interesting plot, loads of details on characters, weapons and places. However I had hesitated before I started to read it. I thought - the main character, one who should be assasined, was doing quite well after 60' so nobody needed to tell me how it would end. Knowing how the book ends is an awfull thing as far as espionage titles are concerned. But it turned out to be quite different. While reading you imagined - if the Jackal is so good, what should happened to stop him. How will the police manage to do it. I'm glad I didn't see the film, because it's good to know no details. But it really doesn't matter if you know that D. G. didn't drop dead.
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Summary: The Jackal is an assassin !
Review: This is great book about an attempt by some ex-military officers in France to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. Like all books I enjoy, the author really knows his stuff. The OAS, after failing to do away with de Gaulle themselves, hire a professional hitman code named the Jackal. This guy is really good but the french have their own really good detective. It's a struggle to stop the Jackal with the fate of France hanging in the balance. The countdown (or page turner) plot with the historical setting seems to be the key to writing sucessful books and this has it.
Rating:
Summary: The Best of the Best
Review: Frederick Forsyth probably created the greatest manhunt novel ever, the one that can never be copied or rivaled. Top class storytelling. You have to read it to believe it!
Rating:
Summary: Holds up well over the years
Review: It's been a lot of years since I read this book. I was curious to see how it would hold up in today's world. After all Charles de Gaulle is long dead, and most of the characters in the movie have World War II as their biggest memory. No computers are part of the plot. And this was before the James Bond gimmickry. How could it possible stand up?Well, it did. If writers and moviemakers today could get it through their heads that a tight, suspensful plot is much better entertainment than any gimmick, we'd have a lot more books as good as this one. Of course, the biggest challenge to the book is that we know in advance that the plot is going to fail. This, of course, is the story of a plot to kill French president de Gaulle in the early sixties by hiring an anonymous assassin to do it. Why even bother reading a book when we know in reality that de Gaulle died a natural death, and we even know that the killer will fail in the story? The secret is to give you the intricate details of who, what, when, where, why, and how. Without getting boring. The book starts by giving some historical background about why some French citizens think their country would be in better shape if their president were murdered. You see the problems of hiring the correct person to do the job, when these people aren't exactly in the Yellow Pages. You see the man chosen, and get to follow as the assassin puts together the tools to do his job. And that's all in Part 1. After all of this, you would wonder what's left, but Part 2 is just as interesting. Through a garbled confession of a captured "revolutionary", they deduce that indeed, someone has been hired to kill the president of France. Problem is, there is absolutely no name or description of this person. How the killer is tracked is almost as interesting as killer putting together his tools. But I'll reveal they don't catch him in Part 2, because then, how would we have Part 3? This is where the police by now knows what he looks like, and even exactly when and where the assassination is going to take place. The killer also knows the police know. Yet the plot moves swiftly and ingeniously, and gets so close to completion you almost applaud the killer. This is a top notch story that should be read by anybody that likes suspense thrillers. In any era.
Rating:
Summary: Better Then Average
Review: This is one of the author's better books. The story and the plot are great, so much so they have been used in any number of other books and movies. This is the original and the best. Sure there are a lot of people to keep track of but that does not take away from homing in on the main characters and keeping them straight. Overall the writing is good and the author spends a good deal of time on the main characters. This is worth the time to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Not to shabby
Review: through out this book from the very beginning your sucked into the aftermath of world war II in France. After a long fought struggle for Algeria the current president of France wishes to sighn Algeria over to the Arabs. In the novel you follow an assassin code named the Jackal. Through out the book you follow the Jackal as he sets up a near fool proof hit on president De Gaulle's life. This is the first book, or story for that matter were you can be either for, or againts the protagonist. The day of the Jackal is good book.The only thing I absolutely loathed about this novel was the use of French phrases, that made no sense to me. This is most likely the only one I'll ever legitimately read. I most definately suggest this book ;)
Rating:
Summary: An everlasting classic!
Review: This book was brilliant to me. I could get into the killers head as he tried to avoid the authorities. I understood that Forsyth knew exactly what he was talking about when he wrote about the assassin. The story was breathtaking. I was tugged between wanting the assassin to kill the De Gaulle, and yet at the same time I wanted him to be caught. Now that is a story!
Rating:
Summary: An Awfully English Assassin
Review: This remains Forsyth's best book, doubtless because it is the most subversive. Readers (at least Anglophone readers) end up actually willing the "Chacal" to succeed in his efforts to shoot de Gaulle, and as we follow the Englishman through Italy and France, there even seems to be a raison d'etre to the succession of ad hoc, cold-blooded murders he commits. While the work is pure fiction, the historic context (OAS right-wingers seething at de Gaulle's 1962 withdrawal from Algeria) is fact. For many years this book had the honor of being one of the few novels faithfully translated into film (the 1973 Edward Fox flick rivalled Maltese Falcon in its fidelity to the text) but all that changed with the botched 1998 Willis remake. Actually, the assassin character is so quintessentially English, and the subtext so wonderfully Europhobic, any attempt to translate the plot to a North American context was doomed.
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Summary: THe BeST
Review: a really good read. I have started loving spy novels just because of this one book. Forsyth is really good in shaping the personality of the character. I just loved it.
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Summary: A thirty-year old classic that¿s still a nail-biter today.
Review: "The Day of the Jackal" is the novel that first gained Forsyth fame as a thriller writer. The Jackal is the code name for an elite and elusive Englishman employed as a political assassin. Both a master marksman and a master of disguise, his target is the much loved and much hated French President, Charles de Gualle. It is 1963, and after various failed attempts on the President's life, his political enemies finally hit on a scheme with the sound of success: by employing a paid outsider - the Jackal. Forsyth chronicles the ruthless Jackal's elaborate preparations for the hit, and his fail-safe measures that appear to ensure the success of his daring scheme. But the mastermind can only succeed if he can elude the sleuthing bloodhounds on his tail, as detectives, police forces and secret services around Europe are fully warned and engage a huge security net to trap the cold-blooded calculating Jackal. With nail-biting suspense, Forsyth unravels the plot, the Jackal always one step ahead of his pursuers. The suspense increases in relentless fashion until the moment of truth, as the Jackal slowly, gently squeezed the trigger... The fast-paced plot is marred only by the fact that it is not entirely clean. There are a few incidences of blasphemy, and the unchaste behaviour of two women features prominently in the Jackal's rise and fall. But on the whole Forsyth treats us to a flurry of action, and heart-stopping suspense and tension. The concept of a manhunt for an elusive political assassin with a brilliant plot may seem tired, but the reality is that Forsyth was one of the first to use it. The intrigue and accuracy of French politics is compelling. This highly acclaimed thriller won the 1972 Edgar Award for Mystery Fiction a year after it was first published. Lovers of espionage and thrillers will not quickly grow tired of it thirty years later, because this suspense thriller is deservedly a classic in the genre. Once you're hooked, you will become like the chief detective - sleepless until the final conclusion.
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