Day Of The Jackal ( Anniversary Ed)

This was a book that broke the mould. It was the first of the heightened-detail thrillers filled with the sort of in-depth procedural and technical information that have become a large part of the fascination for readers of such books. It's a chase story, about the hunt for somebody, but what makes it so special is that it has a remarkable narrative engine to it, given that we know before we start the book that the assassin is going to fail in his bid to kill a real head of state. The proposition of how you get somebody to read a book from start to finish when they know the ending is handled magnificently. This also took the thriller somewhere else, in that it incorporated real people and events into the story to dramatic effect. Moreover, the assassin showed real genius in coming up with a way to achieve his objective, rather than relying on lazy Bond-style fantasy methods and gadgets. This used 'real-world ingenuity' to show how you could travel unobserved, obtain a false passport, hide a gun and so on. The movie might be good, but the novel is even better.