AP
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“Jackal Day” and British author Frederick Forsyth, who died after a brief illness, his literary agent said Monday. He was 86 years old.
His agent, Jonathan Lloyd, said Forsyth died at home early Monday, surrounded by his family.
“We lament the passing of one of the greatest thriller writers in the world,” Lloyd said.
Born in Kent, southern England in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent. He featured the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962. This inspired Jackal Day, his bestselling political thriller about professional assassins.
Published in 1971, the book drove him to global fame. In 1973, it was a film starring Edward Fox as the Jackal, and more recently a television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Rashana Lynch.
In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years since covering the civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s.
Forsyth said he did other jobs for the agency, but he was not paid for his services and told officials who were seeking information that “it’s hard to say no.”
“The times were different,” he told the BBC. “The Cold War was on very long.”
He has written over 25 books, including Afghanistan, Killlist, Dog of War, and Fist of God.
His publisher Bill Scott Kerr said “The Revenge of Odessa,” a sequel to the 1974 book “The Odessa File,” which Forsyth worked with fellow thriller writer Tony Kent, will be published in August.
“While still reading millions of readings around the world, Freddie’s thrillers define the genre and are the benchmark that modern writers are aiming for,” Scott Kerr said.
