Frederick Forsyth, Author of Jackal, Dies at 86

Thriller Author Frederick Forsyth Dies at 86

Frederick Forsyth, the British author best known for The Day of the Jackal, a thriller styled after real court testimony of an attempt to kill Charles de Gaulle, and with more than 70 million copies sold, has died at 86. Forsyth, whose books were said to have been translated into more than 50 languages, died at home early Monday, his literary agent Jonathan Lloyd said in a statement, adding that he had come down with a short illness. He was "one of the world's greatest thriller writers," Lloyd said.

A Career Influenced by Real-Life Events
Forsyth was born in Kent, England, in 1938 and spent around his late teens as a Royal Air Force pilot and foreign correspondent. His reporting of the 1962 assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle, was the catalyst for The Day of the Jackal (1971). The novel was a best seller around the world and was made into a film in 1973 and most recently into a TV series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.

Forsyth shared in a 2015 interview that he had been employed by the British intelligence agency MI6, at least from his time reporting on the Nigerian civil war in the late 1960s onwards. Despite being unpaid, he said, he felt obligated to assist during the Cold War period.

Bestselling Thrillers That Become Legacies
Forsyth wrote more than 25 books during his career, including The Dogs of War, The Afghan, The Fist of God and The Kill List, which sold more than 75m copies worldwide. His publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said a sequel called Revenge of Odessa, written with Tony Kent and inspired by Forsyth's 1974 book The Odessa File, will go out in August.

Forsyth has reinvented the thriller genre and his narrative tradition lives on and is reflected in the writings of authors and audiences all over the world.