When I picked up my kindle I thought one of the benefits would be easy access to some of the older books I had never gotten round to reading. The one book which kept getting 5 star ratings was Frederick Forsyth's 'The Day of the Jackal' so with little else appealing I decided to take a chance on it. Released in 1971, the story opens with a failed plot to kill President Charles De Gaulle in 1963 by the Organisation Armee Secrete (thankfully OAS for majority of the book). This was a group which took exception (putting it mildly) to De Gaulle's decision to grant independence to Algeria in 1962. They believe that Algeria should still be part of France and ...  Read the complete review

Frederick Forsyth's "The day of the jackal" is so well written, that I had a hard job remembering that it is after all only a story and not an account of true events. The plot sees an English political assasin, codenamed the Jackal, hired by an underground French anti De Gaulle movement to kill the French President, General Charles De Gaulle. The Jackal is a master of disguise, and seemingly always one step ahead of French security force efforts to trap him. When he senses the net about to close around him, he is able to transform completely into a different identity with the aid of forged passports and hair dye. His trail on the way to ...  Read the complete review