Frederick Forsyth · 1971 · thriller

Frederick Forsyth's 1971 thriller. Beaten and infiltrated, the OAS hires an Englishman nobody can name to kill President de Gaulle. Codenamed the Jackal, he assembles his rifle, his papers and his cover across Europe - Vienna, Genoa, Brussels, Milan - while Commissaire Claude Lebel, working with nothing, tries to find a man who does not exist before Liberation Day.

1. 1
   Vienna

   In a Vienna hotel room, the hunted leaders of the OAS hire an English assassin whose name nobody knows, for half a million dollars, to do what their own gunmen have failed to do: kill Charles de Gaulle.

2. 2
   Genoa

   In Genoa the Jackal commissions a single-shot rifle from a master gunsmith, slim enough to be broken down and hidden, and buys papers from a forger - a man he kills when the forger tries to squeeze him for more.

3. 3
   Brussels

   He collects the finished rifle from a left-luggage office in Brussels, its parts disguised as the fittings of a crutch and a car, while in Paris the police extract the single word Jackal from a dying OAS clerk.

4. 4
   Milan

   In a lock-up garage in Milan he welds the weapon into the chassis of a hired car and drives for the French frontier - one identity discarded, another ready, always a day or two ahead of the men beginning to hunt him.

5. 5
   Gap

   Warned that the plot is blown, the Jackal presses on regardless: a hotel near Gap in the Alps, a repainted car, another stolen name - shedding papers and killing witnesses as Lebel's net draws slowly tighter.

6. 6
   Paris

   On Liberation Day in Paris, with de Gaulle refusing to change a single engagement, the Jackal takes his window above the square and lays the rifle across a folded coat - and Lebel, hours behind, climbs the stairs behind him.