Frederick Forsyth, the best-selling British author known for his gripping spy thrillers, has died at the age of 86.
Al Jazeera reports that Forsyth, who once worked as both a journalist and an informant for Britain’s MI6, passed away on Monday at his home in the village of Jordans, Buckinghamshire, according to his agent, Jonathan Lloyd.
He wrote nearly 20 novels, including the internationally acclaimed The Day of the Jackal, which helped define the modern political thriller genre.
“We mourn the passing of one of the world’s greatest thriller writers,” Lloyd said of the author, who started writing novels to clear his debts in his early 30s, going on to sell more than 75 million books.
“There are several ways of making quick money, but in the general list, writing a novel rates well below robbing a bank,” he said in his 2015 autobiography, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue.
The gamble paid off when Frederick Forsyth wrote The Day of the Jackal—a gripping tale about a fictional plot by right-wing extremists to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle—in just 35 days.
The novel was an instant success upon its release in 1971. It was later adapted into a film and even inspired the nickname “Carlos the Jackal” for Venezuelan revolutionary Illich Ramirez Sanchez.
Following that breakout hit, Forsyth went on to write a series of bestsellers, including The Odessa File (1972) and The Dogs of War (1974). His 18th novel, The Fox, was published in 2018.
Originally trained as an air force pilot, Forsyth’s fluency in French, German, Spanish, and Russian led him to a career in journalism with Reuters in 1961, where he held postings in Paris and East Berlin during the Cold War.
He later joined the BBC but quickly became frustrated with its bureaucracy and what he viewed as the broadcaster’s unwillingness to properly cover Nigeria due to “the government’s postcolonial views on Africa.”
In his autobiography, Forsyth revealed how he became involved in espionage. He recounted being approached in 1968 by a man named “Ronnie” from MI6, who asked him to serve as “an asset deep inside the Biafran enclave” during Nigeria’s civil war.
In 1973, Forsyth was asked to carry out a mission for MI6 in East Germany. He drove his Triumph convertible to Dresden, where he met a Russian colonel in the toilets of the Albertinum museum to receive a package.
Forsyth said he was never paid for his work with MI6, but in return, he received assistance with research for his novels and even submitted draft pages to the agency to ensure he wasn’t revealing classified information.
Later in life, Forsyth became increasingly outspoken on political issues, offering hardline, right-wing views in his columns for the anti-European Union Daily Express.
He divorced his first wife, Carole Cunningham, in 1988 and married Sandy Molloy in 1994. After losing a fortune in an investment scam in the 1980s, he returned to writing to stay financially afloat.
He had two sons, Stuart and Shane, with his first wife.
