Opinion The Third Edit: The chaotic yet orderly world of Frederick Forsyth

Spies, mercenaries, assassins, Nazi war criminals, radical left wingers — most of Frederick Forsyth’s characters were embedded in geopolitics. Forsyth, who died on Monday aged 86, had a stint with the Royal Air Force and then sought “adventure” in journalism — experiences that greatly influenced his arc as a writer of best-selling thrillers. As a correspondent for Reuters in 1962, he covered the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle by right-wing extremists. This provided the inspiration for his first novel, The Day of the Jackal. It was replete with actual details of the episode, and fictional characters shared space with public figures. The book, which brought a new realism to the thriller genre, became a runaway hit.

Forsyth belonged to a generation of writers whose attention to detail was infectious. The Day of the Jackal goes into the specifics of how a gun is designed. Other details from the novel were borrowed by Forsyth’s peers as well as film scriptwriters — the use of a dead person’s birth certificate to assume a fake identity, for instance. For his second novel, The Odessa Files, Forsyth consulted former Nazis as well as the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. His pursuit of accuracy wasn’t always appreciated. The Odessa Files was criticised for exploiting a painful period in history to spring “quick thrills”. But Forsyth was clear. The novel wasn’t pop fiction — it was about Nazis “living among us”.

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Forsyth’s books sold more than 70 million copies. But he maintained that he wrote thrillers to make money, and reporting was his first love. His forte wasn’t drama, but facts assembled with care to show that though the world might seem chaotic, it’s ruled by order.