As I’ve aged, my favorite artists from cinema to music to the world of literature get closer to their passing. Each year brings a fresh crop of RIPs and today (June 15, 2025), I’m giving out RIPs to both Frederick Forsyth and Joseph Wambaugh. Forsyth passed away this past week at 86 on June 9, 2025, while Wambaugh passed earlier this year at 88 on Feb. 28, 2025, and I’m just now posting my RIP for him.
A tip of the cap for each’s best: Forsyth for “The Day of the Jackal” and Wambaugh for “The Choirboys.”
Both were authors of novels that shaped my reading habits of my teenaged years and represented a “favorite” status in my eyes. After Forsyth and Wambaugh, Florida’s own Carl Hiaasen, Ken Follett, the late Jack Higgins (birth name Henry Patterson), the late Hunter S. Thompson, the late James Clavell and the late football player Peter Gent would join the duo as authors who stood above all others for my taste.
However, none of those could take a step ahead of either Forsyth or Wambaugh in my mind, even though their best would be just slightly better than ore the equal of any effort by Forsyth or Wambaugh. Well, except for Higgins. He was an entertaining writer and I enjoyed may of his 85 novels that rang up 250 million in worldwide sales, but even his best and most successful (“The Eagle Has Landed”) wasn’t as good as the best by Forsyth and Wambaugh.
I’ve found that my favorites in all things entertainment were established when I was young. Today, I guess I’ve grown into one of those folks who don’t believe today’s generation of writers, actors, singers or musicians can compete (save guitarist Joe Bonamassa and that’s only because I “found” him and his music in the early 2010s and he’d been around awhile by then).
I keep looking, but in the literary world, there hasn’t been anyone to compete in my mind with Forsyth and Wambaugh in more than 30 years or, more like 40 years. I came to realize what an “impressionable” age would mean.
Forsyth wrote “The Day of the Jackal” and it was the first novel that I fell in love with as a teenager. The climactic calendar day for “The Day of the Jackal” is Aug. 25 and I’ve celebrated Forsyth and will celebrate him and his novel for the 50th straight year this coming Aug. 25, 2025. I’ve written about the novel (click here); I’ve posted a timeline of day-by-day events of it (click here); and I did a review of the movie directed by Fred Zinnemann (click here).
Forsyth’s first book was a non-fiction effort about civil war in Nigeria called “The Biafra Story” in 1969 from his career as a journalist following his national military service in the UK as a pilot. Then came the trio of novels that set a high standard in my mind: “The Day of the Jackal” in 1971; “The Odessa File” in 1972; and “The Dogs of War” in 1974. All three were turned into films and “The Day of the Jackal” is best and the gold standard for turning a complicated novel into a movie; “The Odessa File” is OK; and “The Dogs of War” is nothing but a scorching, putrid mess that’s better called an abomination.
After the initial trio, Forsyth would do a wonderful novella (“The Shepherd”) and continue on the novel trail. I also enjoyed “The Fist of God,” but as was his weak point in plotting a novel, Forsyth spent too many pages on too much detail of too many unimportant plot backstories in it.
A career of note and thanks to Mr. Forsyth for providing me with such influential entertainment for so many decades. You’ll be remembered on each Aug. 25 for the remainder of my life (and maybe a faint remembrance each Aug. 25 for my family and friends who will remember my honoring of the day).
As for Joe Wambaugh, he was an actual cop writing about real cops – not stylized or misrepresented officers. His first novel was “The New Centurions” and it was about the new generation of Los Angeles police officer starting with their training at the academy. I read all his books in order and found that “The Choirboys” was peak-Wambaugh: it was about a group of nightwatch officers and their “choir practices” where they left off steam. Sadly, the movie “The Choirboys” is one terrifically terrible film and Wambaugh wouldn’t allow his name to be used in connection with it.
Even today, you cannot find better writing about officers or sarcasm and criticism directed at the higher-ups in police organizations. The officers Wambaugh expressed were real: all had flaws as well as honor; all tried to do good and all failed in one way or another; all spoke their mind, but not all at all times. Wambaugh put life into them, flaws and all.
Wambaugh just didn’t write fiction, his non-fiction included “The Onion Field” (about the kidnapping of two detectives and the murder of one) as well as “The Blooding,” which is a murder case from England and considered the first murder investigation in which DNA is used to find the killer.
Another career of note and thanks to Mr. Wambaugh for is work over decades that brought interesting entertainment into my life.
So, two more RIPs to join other authors I’ve enjoyed, including the late Nelson DeMille (click here to read my RIP for him …) as well as the late Tim Dorsey, who, like Hiaasen, was a newspaper journalist in Florida before becoming a popular novelist. I have every book that Dorsey ever published; each in its first edition. DeMille died at 81 in September 2024 and Dorsey died at 62 in November 2023.
My most recent adjustment of my favorite Top 10 books looks like this:
- “North Dallas Forty” by Peter Gent – 1972
- “The Day of the Jackal” by Frederick Forsyth -1971
- “Noble House” by James Clavell – 1985
- “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson –
- “The Choirboys” by Joseph Wambaugh – 1975
- “The Eagle Has Landed” by Jack Higgins – 1975
- “Shogun” by James Clavell – 1975
- “Red Dragon” / “The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris – 1980 / 1987
- “Tourist Season” by Carl Hiaasen
- “Dead Solid Perfect” by Dan Jenkins – 1972
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