The Day of The Jackal author Frederick Forsyth dies, aged 86
His books, many of which were made into films, sold more than 75 million copies
[LONDON] Prolific British thriller writer Frederick Forsyth, who instantly became a global bestselling author when his book The Day of the Jackal was published in 1971, died on Monday (Jun 9) aged 86, his literary agents Curtis Brown said.
Forsyth famously penned his most famous work about a fictional assassination attempt on French president Charles de Gaulle by right-wing extremists in just 35 days after falling on hard times.
It went on to be made into a hit film starring Edward Fox as the assassin. A TV series with Eddie Redmayne in the lead role was released last year.
“We mourn the passing of one of the world’s greatest thriller writers,” his agent Jonathan Lloyd said.
Forsyth died at home surrounded by his family following a brief illness, according to Curtis Brown. Divorced from Carole Cunningham in 1988, he married Sandy Molloy in 1994. He had two sons, Stuart and Shane, with his first wife. His second wife died last year.
The former journalist and pilot wrote over 25 books including The Odessa File (1972) and The Dogs of War (1974) and sold over 75 million copies worldwide. Many of his novels were also turned into films.
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“Only a few weeks ago I sat with him as we watched a new and moving documentary of his life ... and was reminded of an extraordinary life, well lived,” said Lloyd.
A sequel to The Odessa File, entitled Revenge Of Odessa, on which he worked with thriller writer Tony Kent, is due to be published in August, his publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said.
“His journalistic background brought a rigour and a metronomic efficiency to his working practice and his nose for and understanding of a great story kept his novels both thrillingly contemporary and fresh,” Scott-Kerr added.
Forsyth attributed much of his success to “luck”, recalling how a bullet narrowly missed him while he was covering the bloody Biafra civil war between 1967 and 1970.
“I have had the most spectacular luck all through my life,” he told The Times last November in an interview.
“Right place, right time, right person, right contact, right promotion – and even just turning my head away when that bullet went past,” he said.
Asked why he had decided to give up writing – although he later went back to it – he told AFP in 2016 he’d “run out of things to say”.
“I can’t just sit at home and do a nice little romance from within my study, I have to go out and check out places like Modagishu, Guinea Bissau, both hellholes in different ways,” he said.
“I never intended to be a writer at all,” Forsyth wrote in his memoir, The Outsider - My Life in Intrigue. “After all, writers are odd creatures, and if they try to make a living at it, even more so.”
So influential was the novel that Venezuelan militant revolutionary Illich Ramirez Sanchez, was dubbed “Carlos the Jackal”.
Forsyth presented himself as a cross between Ernest Hemingway and John le Carre – both action man and Cold War spy – but delighted in turning around the insult that he was a literary lightweight.
“I am lightweight but popular. My books sell,” he once said.
He was, to the end, a reporter who wrote novels. “In a world that increasingly obsesses over the gods of power, money and fame, a journalist and a writer must remain detached,” he wrote. “It is our job to hold power to account.” AFP, REUTERS
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