The on-screen death count at Cannes tends to be high and this year the blood flowed, squirted and sprayed in films like Olivier Assayas's "Carlos," a portrait of the terrorist and mercenary Carlos the Jackal, which surely would have won a major award if it had been shown in competition.
My wife said: 'What are you going to do?' I said: 'I think I might have a go at a novel.' " The success of journalist-turned-novelist Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal, which was published in 1971 and made into a film two years later, inspired other reporters to have a go at writing a thriller based on their experiences.
The best-known variety is the golden jackal, which is a shimmery rust-gold in colour.
In Ethiopia the golden jackals, which presently includes the cryptic African wolves, are systematically persecuted because of their threat to livestock.
I realized there was a book that could be written about it, so I left the Sunday times, and started researching and writing The New Jackals which was published in 1998.
The other solution to this accent-based conundrum is vividly on display in Fred Zinneman's sterling adaptation of The Day of the Jackal, in which a majority of the characters are French speakers.
"Now, ordinarily, I wouldn't take time out from the important work at hand to answer Murrow, However, in this case, I feel justified in doing so because Murrow is a symbol, the leader and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual Communists and traitors".
Among carnivorous animals are leopards, hyenas, foxes, wolves, and jackals, which inhabit the ravine lands and hilly ridges.
There's Han Sorya's 1951 novella, "Jackals," which is often cited as the epitome of juche literature — propaganda promoting a uniquely North Korean brand of ethnic-nationalist self-reliance.
It was baseball as if devised by P. T. Barnum: a hole-in-one contest driving golf balls into deep center field, a tackle-the-Jackal contest in which children chased the team mascot around the bases, and a competition to throw Frisbees into a wading pool.
Much better is Chris Morgan Jones' The Jackal's Share (Mantle, £12.99), which reunites us with corporate spy Ben Webster from his debut An Agent of Deceit.
