Write about a book you read that stayed with you after you closed the last page.
The Day of the Jackal (1971) is a thriller novel by English author Frederick Forsyth about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organisation, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France. The OAS, as described in the novel, did exist and the book opens with an accurate depiction of the attempt to assassinate de Gaulle led by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry on 22 August 1962; the subsequent plot is fiction.
I was so fascinated by this novel that even if I was already familiar with the story (having watched bits of the the 1973 film with the same title that is based on the novel) and it being a very popular one among my cousins and uncles, I was still engrossed when I first read the novel back in 1994. I couldn’t put the book down as it was so fascinating and well written. I was so into it that I got and made black coffee when the lead detectives drank black coffee and at age 18 I had picked up occasional smoking and lit one whenever the detectives smokes.
Ofcourse I was even more fascinated by the life of an assassin who was a bit of a playboy and carefree socialist in his lifestyle but a cold-blooded killer when hired to do a job. I always thought, what it would be like to get jobs to do that you are hired for, maybe a few times in a year, make a lot of money so you can live off it for the rest of the days. Like say each job paid you $500k or more so you only had to do it 3 maybe 4 times a year and enjoy the rest of the time pretending to be an heir who was left a good sum of money so you can drink, enjoy the beach and date models and live in exquisite hotels all over the world.
And the mind of an assassin. How he gets ready, steals passports, forges documents, smuggles in weapons to get ready for the kill. And how no one can stand in his way. Except ofcourse the detective who won in the end. But it almost too late and luck had a big part to play in it. I love this novel and have read it several times since.
Prompt from 31 Days of Writing Prompts for May at the SitsGirls