The British thriller author wrote more than 25 books and sold 75 million copies around the world.
Frederick Forsyth, theBritishauthor ofThe Day of the Jackaland other bestselling thrillers, has died after a brief illness, his literary agent said Monday. He was 86.
Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said Forsyth died at home early Monday surrounded by his family.
"We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers," Lloyd said.
Forsyth published more than 25 books, also includingThe Odessa FileandThe Dogs of War, and sold 75 million copies around the world, he said.
Forsyth's most famous work was about a fictional assassination attempt on formerFrenchPresident Charles de Gaulle by right-wing extremists 35 days after falling on hard times.
The Jackalwent on to be made into a hit film starring Edward Fox as the assassin. ANetflixremake, with Eddie Redmayne in the lead role, was released last year.
Forsyth attributed much of this success to "luck," recalling how a bullet narrowly missed him while he was covering the bloody Nigerian civil war between 1967 and 1970.
"I have had the most spectacular luck all through my life," he told British newspaperThe Timeslast November in an interview.
"Right place, right time, right person, right contact, right promotion — and even just turning my head away when that bullet went past," he said.
Forsyth was a former journalist and pilot and saw many of his novels were also turned into films.
"After serving as one of the youngest ever RAF pilots, he turned to journalism, using his gift for languages in German, French and Russian to become a foreign correspondent inBiafra(inNigeria)," Lloyd explained in announcing Forsyth's death.
"Appalled at what he saw and using his experience during a stint as a secret service agent, he wrote his first and perhaps most famous novel,The Day Of The Jackal," he added.
A sequel toThe Odessa File, entitledRevenge Of Odessa, which he co-wrote with Tony Kent, is due to be published in August, his publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said.
"His journalistic background brought a rigour and a metronomic efficiency to his working practice and his nose for and understanding of a great story kept his novels both thrillingly contemporary and fresh," Scott-Kerr added.
Forsyth had two sons by his first wife. His second wife, Sandy, died last year.