#18 in Thriller
The Day of the Jackal
- 416
- Pages
- about 8 h
- Reading time
- Best Crime Novel in Swedish Translation
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Our view
“The Day of the Jackal” builds its suspense on a foregone conclusion: the outcome is disclosed early, and the tension holds to the last page. Forsyth alternates between a hired assassin preparing to kill de Gaulle and the detective hunting a man known only by a code name. Readers praise the realism of its tradecraft and detail, and some single out the second half for its speed.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Day of the Jackal is a 1971 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.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.3 across 239 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 62% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Thriller average of 7.6. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.4 | 19 | 8% |
| Google Books | 8.0 | 8 | 3% |
| Hardcover | 8.3 | 212 | 89% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Day of the Jackal?
It has 416 pages — shorter than 60% of the ranked books in Thriller.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Thriller — with scores between 7.6 and 8.2, closest to this book.
