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#DAY OF THE JACKAL CAST PROFESSIONAL#
Essentially he had investigated and reported on a made-up story, with exactly the same meticulous professional rigor he would have used on a real story. Wouldn’t that fatally short-circuit the essential suspense that thriller readers crave? And also … France … Algeria … wasn’t it all rather far away and long ago?īut Forsyth believed in his book, as he should. At first glance the story seemed to ask the basic question: would the hired killer get de Gaulle or not? But… everyone already knew he hadn’t.Įveryone already knew de Gaulle was still alive, well, famous, prominent, and notably un-assassinated. Good going, but the completed manuscript immediately ran into the same objections we marvel at today. Actor Adrien Cayla-Legrand as Charles de Gaulle in The Day of the Jackal (Photo: Getty/Mondadori) Legend has it Forsyth wrote The Day of the Jackal in less than six weeks, in January and February 1970, at a rate of 4,000 words a day, every day, for a total of 140,000. The notion came back to him almost seven years later. He mused on the idea for a minute, before changing beats and moving on. Therefore, Forsyth further concluded that the only way for the militants to hit their target would be to hire an independent foreign assassin as yet completely unknown to the French authorities. De Gaulle survived, as he did every time, because, Forsyth concluded, the vicious and far-reaching French secret service had all the militants under constant close surveillance.