The author “Day of the Jackal” Frederick Forsyth dies at 86

Frederick Forsyth, British author of “The Day of the Jackal” and other best -selling thrillers, died in a short illness, said his literary agent on Monday.

He was 86 years old.

Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said that Forsyth died at home at the beginning of Monday surrounded by his family.

“We cry the disappearance of one of the greatest writers of the world’s thriller,” Lloyd said.

Born in Kent, in southern England, in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent.

He covered the attempt of assassination of the French president Charles De Gaulle in 1962, who provided inspiration for “The Day of the Sciacallo”, his best -selling political thriller on a professional killer.

Published in 1971, the book pushed him into global fame.

He was transformed into a film in 1973 with Edward Fox as Jackal and more recently a television series with Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.

In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British Intelligence Agency Mi6 for many years, starting from when he covered a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s.

Although Forsyth said he had carried out other works for the agency, he said he was not paid for his services and “it was difficult to say no” to officials looking for information.

“The Zeitgeist was different,” he told the BBC. “The cold war was very heated.”

He wrote more than 25 books including “The Afghan”, “The Kill List”, “The Dogs of War” and “The Fist of God” who sold over 75 million copies, said Lloyd.

His publisher, Bill Scott-Kr., said that “Revenge of Odessa”, a sequel to the 1974 book “The Odessa File” on which Forsyth worked with his colleague author of the thriller Tony Kent, will be published in August.

“Still read by millions of people all over the world, Freddie’s thrillers define the genre and are still the reference point to which contemporary writers aspire,” said Scott-Wrick. [AP]

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