Reacher Creator Cites The Day of the Jackal as Inspiration

Lee Child has said Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal helped inspire the creation of Jack Reacher. Child's first Reacher novel, Killing Floor (1997), launched a long-running book series that later saw two Tom Cruise films and a Prime Video series; the 2022 Reacher show aimed to correct the films' missteps and deliver what many fans wanted from an adaptation.

The Day of the Jackal centers on a professional assassin contracted by the OAS to kill French president Charles de Gaulle. Published in 1971 and winner of the Best Novel Edgar Award in 1972, Forsyth's novel read more like a documentary, with granular details about things such as the cost of fake passports and how one acquires a black-market weapon.

Child described the book as having "a wholly new approach.

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