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

[2] The novel begins as historical fiction: the OAS, as described, did exist and did conspire to commit the act, which the book opens with, giving an accurate depiction of the attempt to assassinate de Gaulle by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry on 22 August 1962.

Following the arrest of Bastien-Thiry and various other conspirators, the French security forces wage a short but extremely vicious underground war with the terrorists of the OAS, a militant right-wing group who believe de Gaulle to be a traitor to France after the Évian Accords granted Algeria her independence.

The failure of the Petit-Clamart assassination, and a subsequent betrayal of the next attempt on de Gaulle's life at the École Militaire, compounded by Bastien-Thiry's eventual execution by firing squad, likewise demoralise the antagonists.

Argoud's deputy, Lt-Col Marc Rodin, carefully examines what few options they have remaining and establishes that the only way to succeed in killing de Gaulle is to hire a professional mercenary from outside the organisation, who is completely unknown to both the French government and the OAS itself.

After extensive inquiries, he contacts an unnamed English hitman, who meets with Rodin and his two principal deputies in Vienna, and agrees to assassinate de Gaulle, although he demands a total of US$500,000 (roughly US$5 million in 2023 currency).

The triumvirate of OAS commanders then take up residency on the top floor of a hotel in Rome guarded by a group of ex-legionnaires to avoid the risk of being captured like Argoud and subsequently revealing the assassination plot under interrogation, and also to minimise the possibility of being executed.

Masquerading as Duggan, the Jackal travels to Brussels, where he commissions a master gunsmith to build him a special suppressed sniper rifle of extreme slimness with a small supply of mercury-tipped explosive bullets.

The rest of the meeting is at a loss to suggest how to proceed, until a Commissioner of the Police Judiciaire reasons that their first and most essential objective is to establish the Jackal's true identity, which is something that he insists is "pure detective work".

Thomas is then surprised when he receives a summons in person to report to the Prime Minister (unnamed, but most probably intended to represent Harold Macmillan),[citation needed] who informs him that word of his inquiries has reached higher circles in the British government.

While Thomas confirms that this Calthrop was indeed in the Dominican Republic at the time of Trujillo's death, he does not believe it justifies informing Lebel, until one of his junior detectives realises that the first three letters of his first name and surname (i.e. "CHA-rles CAL-throp") forms "Chacal", the French word for "Jackal".

When they discover that the Jackal is travelling in the name of Duggan, Lebel and a police force come close to apprehending him in the south of France, but owing to his OAS contact, he leaves his hotel early and evades them by only an hour.

Having failed to capture the Jackal at least twice, and with each imminent arrest happening hours after the conference was informed, Lebel becomes suspicious of what the rest of the council label the killer's apparent "good luck", and has the telephones of all the members tapped, which leads him to discover the OAS female agent.

He makes his way to an apartment building overlooking the Place du 18 Juin 1940 (in front of the soon-to-be-demolished façade of the Gare Montparnasse), where de Gaulle is presenting medals to a small group of Resistance veterans.

Having sneaked into a suitable apartment to shoot from, the Jackal prepares his weapon and takes aim at de Gaulle's head, but his first shot misses by a fraction of an inch when the President unexpectedly leans forward to kiss the cheeks of the veteran he is honouring.

Over the three years immediately prior to his writing The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth spent most of his time in West Africa covering the Biafran war, first for the BBC in 1967 and then for another eighteen months as a freelance journalist in 1968–1969.

[4][5] To Forsyth's disappointment, however, the book sold very few copies and so with the arrival of the 1970s the then 31 year-old freelance journalist, international adventurer, and onetime youngest (at 19) fighter pilot in the RAF found himself both out of work and "flat broke".

[6][7] Unlike most novelists, however, Forsyth would employ the same type of research techniques that he had used as an investigative reporter to bring a sense of increased reality to his work of fiction, a story which he first began to consider writing in 1962–1963 while posted to Paris as a young Reuters foreign correspondent.

[8] When Forsyth arrived in 1962, French President Charles de Gaulle had just granted independence to Algeria to end the eight-year Algerian War, a highly controversial act that had incurred the wrath of the anti-decolonisation paramilitary group Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) which then vowed to assassinate him.

[9] Forsyth incorporated an account of that real-life event to open his new novel throughout which he also employed many other aspects and details about France, its politics, the OAS, and international law enforcement that he had learned during his career as an investigative journalist.

In his 2015 memoir The Outsider, Forsyth wrote that during his time in France he briefly considered that the OAS might assassinate de Gaulle if they hired a man or men who were completely unknown to French authorities – an idea he would later expand upon in Jackal.

[17] Although the book was not formally reviewed by the press prior to its initial June 1971 UK publication, widespread word of mouth resulted in brisk advance and post-publication sales leading to repeated additional printings.