Penzler Pick, November 2001: Each book by Ken Follett, one of the most successful suspense writers of our time, is a welcome event. With Jackdaws, he returns to his most successful era, the darkest days of World War II. It is 1944 and the Allies are preparing for the invasion of Europe. In the occupied town of Sainte-Cecile, the French Resistance is preparing to blow up the chateau that now houses the crucial telephone exchange connecting the French telephone system to that of Germany. Bombers have been unable to inflict enough damage on the chateau to disrupt communications for more than a few hours at a time, but the Allies need to make sure that communications is down for longer so that there will be as little warning of the invasion as possible.
Felicity Clariet, known as Flick, is a British secret agent patrolling the streets around the chateau waiting for the first explosions that will give the signal for the attack to begin. She is married to Michel, a Resistance fighter. When the operation goes horribly wrong, they barely escape with their lives and Flick returns to her home in London--but not for long. When Flick returns to France it will be as part of an audacious, quickly assembled plan to put female spies in the chateau as telephone operators and cleaners, enabling the Allies to destroy the ability of the Exchange to warn Germany in advance of the landing on the beaches of Normandy. The twists and turns of the plot will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Follett tells us that Jackdaws is based on a true story. The Special Operations Executive sent 50 women into France as secret agents. Thirty-six survived. --Otto Penzler
From Library Journal
Charged with crippling communications in Europe before D-Day, Special Operations Executive "Flick" Clariet must pin her hopes on a group of nonprofessionals code-named the Jackdaws.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Follett is a very limited writer: he does plot-driven, breakneck-paced thrillers. That's all he does, but he does them very well. He's dead on-target this time, updating that World War II workhorse in which a gang of misfits goes behind Nazi lines to do the impossible. Yes, it's The Dirty Dozen, but here it's recast as The Dirty Half-Dozen, Girl Version. The impossible mission is to take out a German telephone exchange near Reims in the last few hours before D-Day. A full-frontal assault led by British SOE (Special Operations Executives) Felicity "Flick" Clariet and her husband, a French Resistance leader, has failed, leaving the Allies with only a last-minute desperation plan: a team of six women, posing as a cleaning detail, will infiltrate the exchange and dismantle it. Flick has only a few hours to round up her team, and she must choose from a handful of SOE rejects, as well as the odd prisoner and sharpshooting aristocrat. Outsiders for the twenty-first century, the assembled team includes two lesbians, a German transvestite, and a gypsy. All of this may sound like cliched melodrama, but when Follett starts the clock and slips the narrative gearshift into synchromesh, one's literary misgivings are abandoned in the wake of the plot's forward thrust. A handful of romantic subplots show Follett's weaknesses at dramatizing human relationships, but, fortunately, he knows not to dally overlong with the subtle stuff. This is not the equal of Eye of the Needle (one of the few times when Follett created a full-bodied character to go with a stunning story), but it is thoroughly entertaining all the same. A movie version with Madonna as the gypsy and Jamie Lee Curtis as the transvestite would seem a must. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Praise for Jackdaws
"The book's celebration of uncommon courage and unlikely heroes couldn't be better timed . . . a distaff Dirty Dozen." —People
"A very entertaining, very cinematic thriller about a ragtag, all-female band of British agents, code-named Jackdaws, sent to blow up a key telephone exchange in France on the eve of D day . . . adventure, romance, derring-do. . . . [Jackdaws] promises to be one of Follett's most popular novels ever." —Publishers Weekly
"Compelling reading . . . great entertainment." —The Baltimore Sun
"Deeply satisfying." —Entertainment Weekly
"Suspenseful, gripping." —New York Post
"With its vivid characters, suspense, patriotism, and examples of supreme bravery, Jackdaws is a fitting tribute to the women of World War II." —The Orlando Sentinel
"Cleverly plotted. . . . The characters are sharply drawn and fully realized [and] the pace is rapid-fire." —Minneapolis Star Tribune
"A sort of distaff dirty (half) dozen. They don't come any tougher, smarter, braver, or for that matter, deadlier than Major Felicity (call her 'Flick') Clairet. Quintessentially female and sexy as all get out, she kills without compunction if that's the way the mission goes." —Kirkus Reviews
"Carried off with the kind of galvanic skill that was the hallmark of Follett's early books . . . a memorable, complex heroine." —Publishing News
"For fans of the sixties movie The Dirty Dozen, this could be called The Perfumed Six. . . . It's certainly pleasant to have the main character be female." —The Buffalo News
"[Follett] is dead on-target . . . updating that World War II workhorse in which a gang of misfits goes behind Nazi lines to do the impossible . . . thoroughly entertaining." —Booklist
"Follett delivers one of his most entertaining thrillers." —The Denver Post
From the Inside Flap
D-Day is approaching. They don't know where or when, but the Germans know it'll be soon, and for Felicity "Flick" Clariet, the stakes have never been higher. A senior agent in the ranks of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) responsible for sabotage, Flick has survived to become one of Britain's most effective operatives in Northern France. She knows that the Germans' ability to thwart the Allied attack depends upon their lines of communications, and in the days before the invasion no target is of greater strategic importance than the largest telephone exchange in Europe.But when Flick and her Resistance-leader husband try a direct, head-on assault that goes horribly wrong, her world turns upside down. Her group destroyed, her husband missing, her superiors unsure of her, her own confidence badly shaken, she has one last chance at the target, but the challenge, once daunting, is now near impossible. The new plan requires an all-woman team, none of them professionals, to be assembled and trained within days. Code-named the Jackdaws, they will attempt to infiltrate the exchange under the noses of the Germans-but the Germans are waiting for them now and have plans of their own. There are secrets Flick does not know-secrets within the German ranks, secrets among her hastily recruited team, secrets among those she trusts the most. And as the hours tick down to the point of no return, most daunting of all, there are secrets within herself…
Filled with the powerful storytelling, unforgettable characters, and authentic detail that have become his hallmarks, Jackdaws is Ken Follett writing at the height of his powers.
From the Back Cover
Praise for Code to Zero:
"Code to Zero's split-second suspense proves that nearly a quarter of a century after his breakthrough novel, Eye of the Needle, Follett is still a hell of a storyteller." - Entertainment Weekly
"Starts off fast and never slows down...Follett creates a rousing story taht never flags." - Chicago Tribune
About the Author
Ken Follett is the author of fourteen previous novels, and the nonfiction On the Wings of Eagles.
With the Allied invasion of Europe only days away, Flick Clairet, a steel-nerved operative in the British Army, leads a group of women into occupied France to destroy a vital German communications center. Their adversary is a ruthless Nazi intelligence officer with a talent for torture. Kate Reading's cool narration is appropriate to a thriller involving two icy opponents. If her characterizations are lacking, the fault is not hers, but that of an author whose imagination has failed him. He takes pains to assemble a Dirty Dozen team of female agents and then renders them virtually indistinguishable from one another. That and Follet's penchant for soap opera leave Reading, like Flick Clairet, with little choice but to simply get on with it. M.O. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Sir Stewart Menzies, the foxhunting head of MI6, hated intellectuals, communists, and homosexuals, but Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who led the codebreakers, was all three.Highlighted by 160 Kindle readers
