The Day of the Jackal
In a class by itself. Unputdownable' Sunday TimesOne of the most celebrated thrillers ever written, The Day of the Jackal is the electrifying story of an anonymous Englishman who in, the spring of 1963, was hired by Colonel Marc Rodin, Operations Chief of the O. A. S., to assassinate General de Gaulle. The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man. One man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive not even his employers know his name. And as the minutes count down to the final act of execution, it seems that there is no power on earth that can stop the Jackal.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
6mentions
6people
2009–2025years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > Chaos by James Gleick
I read this quite a while ago, and can't remember it at all. What did you think of it?
> The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
Loved this when I was a kid.
- > Anyone have any recommendations for other classic spy novels like le Carre’s?
Probably not comparable, but Frederick Forsyth's novels are great. He wrote The Day of the Jackal, The Fourth Protocol, etc. If you want a taste for his books, I would suggest The Devil's Alternative.
- How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg
Bhagvad Gita by Eknath Easwaran
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
How The World Really Works by Vaclav Smil
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
Chaos by James Gleick
Wind and Truth (Stormlight Archive #5) by Brandon Sanderson
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
- Also from CBC.ca: "Frederick Forsyth, author of The Day of the Jackal, The Shepherd, dead at 86" at https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/1.6369690
- Roughly 20 years ago, there was a documentary on British TV about fake ID. They found that the technique used in the 1971 book The Day of the Jackal (find someone dead, get a copy of their birth certificate, bootstrap other ID from that) still worked.
They then demonstrated how you didn’t even need the person you were doing this to to be dead, as they got a provisional driving license in the name of David Blunkett. Who was the Home Secretary at the time. And is blind.
Apparently the UK police still use the Jackal method as of last year, though obviously no system can possibly prevent actions by its own enforcement body: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/07/met-police-l...
- "... Tom was a motorcycle enthusiast, visiting many different countries on his bike and posting pictures of his travels on his blog. He was also a member of Friends Reunited and probably "a myriad of other sites" 0f which Rawling is unaware. She describes his continuing presence on the web as "eerie", and would like some of the information removed."Normally you get in touch with friends and acquaintances and colleagues and let them know what's happened," she says. "That gives you closure and stops you being contacted in future and asked how you both are. But to my knowledge, there's no way of doing that with the web. ..."
Lots of other problems as well. Paid existing accounts expire, it could also be a way to create new digital identities. A modern day adaption of identity theft used in by the Forsyth character, "The Jackal" ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Jackal
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