France, infuriated by Charles de Gaulle's withdrawal from Algeria, had failed in six known attempts to assassinate the General. This book assumes that the seventh, most deadly, attempt involved a professional killer-for-hire who would be unknown to the French police. The code name of this killer: Jackal. His price: half a million dollars. His demand: total secrecy, even from his employers.
Step by painstaking step we follow the Jackal in his meticulous planning, from the fashioning of a collapsible but powerful rifle, the theft of passports, the forging of documents, the devising of alternate identities, to the laying out of his maze-like approach to the time and the place where the General is to meet the Jackal's specially-made bullet.
Quite simply, from my perspective, the thriller to judge all other thrillers by. Forsyth sets himself a major challenge -- to make a page-turner out of an event whose outcome we know from the beginning.
His authority, his sense of detail, his pace of the predator and prey (and which is which) is without peer. Just a great, wild, intricate ride.....
