(Note: This examination of Frederick Forsyth’s fiction contains numerous spoilers and is intended mainly for those who are familiar with his work. Read with caution.) Frederick Forsyth is 85 years old, and I hope he lives to see his one-hundredth birthday. But whether he dies at 86 or 106, I have a feeling that the obituaries in mainstream publications will sum up his career in roughly the same fashion. Any fair accounting of his career will have to note that The Day of the Jackal, published in the summer of 1971, was one of the greatest – and most influential – thrillers of the twentieth century. Details from Forsyth’s novel were borrowed countless times in other books, TV shows, and films of the 1970s and beyond. One such detail involves the acquisition of a fake identity and has come to be known as the “Day of the Jackal fraud,” because it has appeared in so many fictions and has been attempted with various degrees of success by numerous real-life fraudsters. It involves visiting a graveyard and finding the tombstone of a dead person who was born close to your own birth date. Armed with this person’s name and date of birth, you then visit the local hall of records, give them the fake name and birth date, claim that they are yours, and then inform the clerk that you have lost your original birth certificate and would like to obtain a copy. Armed with this birth certificate, you can then go out and acquire a fake driver license, a fake passport, fake credit cards, etc. Modern technology has mostly rendered this ruse obsolete, but at the time that
FREDERICK FORSYTH'S FINAL FICTIONS
FREDERICK FORSYTH'S FINAL FICTIONS
FREDERICK FORSYTH'S FINAL FICTIONS
(Note: This examination of Frederick Forsyth’s fiction contains numerous spoilers and is intended mainly for those who are familiar with his work. Read with caution.) Frederick Forsyth is 85 years old, and I hope he lives to see his one-hundredth birthday. But whether he dies at 86 or 106, I have a feeling that the obituaries in mainstream publications will sum up his career in roughly the same fashion. Any fair accounting of his career will have to note that The Day of the Jackal, published in the summer of 1971, was one of the greatest – and most influential – thrillers of the twentieth century. Details from Forsyth’s novel were borrowed countless times in other books, TV shows, and films of the 1970s and beyond. One such detail involves the acquisition of a fake identity and has come to be known as the “Day of the Jackal fraud,” because it has appeared in so many fictions and has been attempted with various degrees of success by numerous real-life fraudsters. It involves visiting a graveyard and finding the tombstone of a dead person who was born close to your own birth date. Armed with this person’s name and date of birth, you then visit the local hall of records, give them the fake name and birth date, claim that they are yours, and then inform the clerk that you have lost your original birth certificate and would like to obtain a copy. Armed with this birth certificate, you can then go out and acquire a fake driver license, a fake passport, fake credit cards, etc. Modern technology has mostly rendered this ruse obsolete, but at the time that