The Day of the Jackal

Executive Summary: Slow at times, but with a great finish. I liked but didn't love this one.

Audiobook: Simon Prebble is a great narrator. I liked him more in the last book I read by him, but he speaks clearly with good inflection and adds some voices into the mix. He was a good fit for this book making the audio a good option for this book.

Full Review
Apparently the real life “Carlos the Jackal” was given his nickname because this book was spotted on him. I'm not sure if that's true, but I had thought this was somehow related to him.

Instead it's a historical fiction/thriller about a real life group of French dissidents from the 1960s who hire a (fictitious) mercenary assassin to assassinate then French president Charles de Gaulle.

The book starts with a bit of a history lesson that I found a bit dry. It then goes into a lot of background about the dissident group (called the O.A.S) and France in the 1960s. Charles de Gaulle survived six assassination attempts, which is pretty crazy. I can see why Mr. Forsyth chose him/France as his backdrop. I probably wouldn't have appreciated the politics without all the background, but I still found it on the slow side.

In general, I found some parts of the book far too detailed for my liking. I'm not a huge crime buff. I tend to prefer my thrillers to be a bit more action oriented than this was. I think anyone who enjoys that kind of thing will find this story more enjoyable than I did.

The final third of the book where the plan of the Jackal was being executed while a massive man hunt to find and stop him was underway was a lot more enjoyable to me than all the setup and planning parts that take up the first two-thirds.

Overall, I thought this was a decent read, but wasn't quite as exciting as I had expected.