Ed,
Re your question below:
"Isn't Frederick Forsyth's DAY OF THE JACKAL about French
assassins?"
Strictly speaking, it's about an ENGLISH assassin who's hired
by French terrorists.
Well, strictly speaking, I'm not sure you could call them
terrorists, since they're aiming their violence at the
specific target rather than at innocent people who have
nothing really to do with the target, but that's an
existential bone I won't pick here.
Point is, the hit man who's aiming to murder De Gaulle, and
from whose POV we experience a good chunk of the novel, is a
Brit who's been hired to a job of work, not a Frenchman moved
my patriotic impulses, however arguably misguided.
As for making the Jackal sympathetic, it never occurred to me
that Forsyth was trying to do that. Personally, I was rooting
for the cop, Claude Lebel
(the other POV character), who was assigned to nail
him.
JIM DOHERTY
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