Lee Child: Why Forsyth's Day Of The Jackal was a game-changer for thrillers By Rebecca Jones image copyrightAxel Dupeux Author Lee Child knows a thing or two about thrillers. He has published 25 of them, featuring Jack Reacher, which have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. So when he says The Day Of The Jackal is "a year-zero, game-changing thriller, one of the most significant of all time" you listen. It is 50 years since the book by Frederick Forsyth was published but, in a new introduction to a special anniversary edition, Child says it still feels "luminously fresh and new". And no-one is more surprised than Forsyth himself. Not only was it his first novel, but also he tells the BBC: "I'd never written a word of fiction in my life."