Tense moments

Once again it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am not to be trusted to walk in to a bookshop whilst carrying any form a valid currency or plastic and not come out with a purchase. Yep.. I went to the bookshop in Wolverton and before I knew it I was holding three books and paying for them at the till. Ah well.... just a few more books won't hurt.

Books bought: 3
Books to be read: 76

In between doing usual stuff during the week and over this weekend I have also managed to finish another one. And what a corker it was!


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The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsyth
I had no problem making my mind up on this one. I loved reading it! It had a great pace, good tension build up and the characters in it were interesting and intriguing.
In essence the story if that of an assassin who is hired by a group of plotters who would rather have De Gaulle dead than looking dapper in his uniform. One of the plotters comes up with the idea of a foreign assassin, a complete unknown to the police in France. This type of man seems to be the only one who might be able to rid them of their political leader and start a new era for the plotters. After an extensive search they find their man (An Englishman), agree a code name (The Jackal), and agree a fee to be paid (Half a million dollars) and leave the stranger to his own devices. He has a contact that can feed him information if need be but he will essentially carry out the planning of the hit himself, on his own. Not even the plotters will know when he will strike. There are a number of small things that reveal the existence of a plot to the authorities and at first they are baffled as to how they are to discover a man who has no name and no known whereabouts. However, through dogged police work, some neat little coincidences and some sheer good luck they manage to find out what passports he is using and who he could be impersonating. The Jackal has prepared himself well for this one and he has four different identities he can choose from. The man who supplied him with these does not live to tell the tale but apart form that the death toll our Jackal leaves behind is not that high. He is obviously a very clever and cunning man and can blend into any background. He is not know to any authorities and therein lies his strength. He manages to stay one step ahead of the police almost until the very end. He does get caught in the end and it is good that the man who has headed the investigation in France is the one who ends the hunt. Then in the last few pages you find out that it was a pure stroke of luck that they actually found the name in the first place (will the real Charles Calthrop please stand up?!) and the whole thing seems even more amazing.
What stuck me with this one was the way the book was written. The style is very "meticulous" like the Jackal. It's concise, clean, organised and precise. The whole book feels like that and I guess that is reflected in the character of the Jackal as well. Forsyth does not use elaborate descriptive language to entertain us but he sticks to the facts and lets them speak for themselves. He changes perspective from the Jackal to the other in players in the story so you get to see their reactions to what happens and this makes the whole thing more interesting. There is some distraction away from the main storyline as some of the characters' actions are given some attention but these asides do not stray from the main story too far and serve to develop the plot forwards to the next step. The story moves on quickly, it seems even quicker the nearer we get to the end of the book, as we draw nearer to the time of the hit the developments go quicker and the tension mounts. The reveals are timed well and you as a reader are in sync with them happening so you are neither anxiously waiting for the next reveal or impatiently wanting to see what happens next. The only thing I did think at one point as the Jackal was cruising around France in his car was "does this guy never have to stop for petrol". Fortunately for me the next page he did.
It would take up far too much time to explain all the little twists and turns that lead to the discovery of the Jackal, who he is and where he is holed up. Suffice it to say that if nothing else the story shows how many little things when connected can show you the big picture. At first glance this picture seems to suggest being one thing and then, just when you think you know what the picture is going to be, it changes in front of your eyes into something different and you have to go back and start again. There are so many times the policemen are close to catching our Jackal but each time they miss him by days or hours. The Jackal stays cool, focused and concentrates on getting the job done by whatever means necessary (hence the slight increase in the body count at the end) and he just about pulls it off too. It was a joy to read this one!


Title: The Day of the Jackal
Author: Frederick Forsyth
382 pages
Corgi Books
ISBN: 0 552 09121 0


Books to be Read: 75