Ken Follett's triple is memorable to me because it is one of the first adult oriented novels I read. The story is about secret agent Nat Dickstein who has the impossible mission of stealing 200 tons of uranium, without anyone else knowing about the theft. As with many of his novels, Follett make the reader believe the impossible. There were a few times when I thought Follett pushed the limits of believability, but there were no blatant attempts to insult the reader.

The best thing about this novel is the pacing. I found it impossible to find a place to put the novel down; every page is exciting. This is not unusual for a Follett novel however, as most people will finish one of his books in week.

The only problem I had with this novel deals with the main romance of the story. The two characters go from being almost complete strangers, to waking up in the same bed in only a few pages. I realize that this is a spy novel and not a romance novel, but it would have been possible for Follett to spread it out a little bit more.

Even with the few believability issues, this is still one of the better spy-novels out there. Anyone looking for a good read should pick this book up.

I think this is the period of time when Ken Follett was probably at the top of his game. This book comes close to The Pillars of the Earth. This is a great story, similar to The Sum of All Fears just 15 years earlier and better action. Follett has always been great at developing his characters and he does it again with this book. And he always gets the facts correct; he must spend a good deal of time researching the topics. This book moves very fast and has a number of twists, there is real suspense built up through out the book. This book is one of the best of the class.

Making an atomic bomb is easy to do if you have a nuclear plant and the raw material (yellowcake) to make the uranium needed. Egypt has been successful in building the plant but now they need the yellowcake. Israel also has a plant and is in dire need of the same raw material.The Russians are backing the Arabs in this race so we have the agents from the Mossad, the KBG, and the Arabs and a double agent thrown in for an advantage to which nation? Ken Follett is a great writer of suspense and keeps you guessing thru the entire book as to who is going to steal and keep the stolen goods. Schoolmates from Oxford and one of their professors from ten years ago seek to favor one country over the other. We know the prof favors one country but who does his daughter favor? Who comes up with a reasonable way to transport thethousands of tons of yellowcake and who figures out a way to steal it from them? You won't want to put this book down until the end so plan on loosing some sleep. After you finish this book you may want to catch your breath before you start another of Follett's books, "Eye of the Needle" which is another suspensful spy story of WW II vintage. Both deserve more than a five star rating.

This was my 5th Ken Follett book, and I expect I'll read them all. His versatility with different settings and themes is amazing, but the constant remains skillful storytelling and believable characters. The Key to Rebecca did a great job allowing the reader to experience events sympathetically from the points of view of each character, including Erwin Rommel and Anwar Sadat!

This is the first novel I have read by Ken Follett and I am about to start Eye of the Needle. This book was fast-paced, exciting and well written. It had everything you need. A good story, action, adventure, style, and beautiful woman. Please read this book.

I've read almost all of Ken Follett's books and would rate this as his second best, behind Pillars of the Earth, and right up there with Eye of the Needle. It has the usual stock elements found in any thriller: an admirable hero, a despicable villain, a vulnerable but brave young girl, but infuses them with real humanity and builds to a crackling and suspenseful climax. As in other Follett books, he makes the conflict many-layered: The hero (Major Van Damme) wants to apprehend the villain (Alex Wolf) not only because it can have an effect on the progress of the second World War in Egypt, but because they have a past together, and because the girl he is falling in love with has been used as "bait" for Wolf. Shades of Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious.

What I like about Follett's best work is that it really delivers the suspense and resolves the story in an incredibly satisfying way. Like many spy novels, there are contrived situations, but he "gets you to turn over the next page" (Ian Fleming's goal as author of the James Bond books) so eagerly that you just want to see how it ends. His female characters are far from cardboard as well: both of them are fully realized. And, best of all, he makes everyone vulnerable; he knows that we can identify with characters that have strengths and weaknesses, instead of the usual cast of robots exchanging gunfire from speeding cars.

Ken Follett's new novel, "Jackdaws," joins the scores of other historical novels written about clandestine spies and saboteurs performing heroic acts during World War II. Unfortunately, this novel has nothing new to offer and Follett's cliché-ridden writing weakens its impact considerably.

The heroine of "Jackdaws" is Felicity "Flick" Clairet, a formidable woman of considerable beauty who leads a ragtag band of resistance fighters in occupied France. Her foe is Dieter Franck, a German answering to Field Marshall Rommel. Franck has been assigned the task of crippling the French Resistance before the expected Allied invasion in June of 1944. Flick recruits a small band of women, known as "Jackdaws," to carry out a dangerous mission that, if successful, will help insure the success of the Allied invasion.

Ken Follett is capable of top-notch storytelling, although his powers have certainly waned in recent years. Here, he relies heavily on clichés: the beautiful and intrepid secret agents, the secret codes and signals, the dozens of close calls when capture seems inevitable, the scenes of torture, the "stiff upper lip" dialogue. Follett's narrative never comes to life, since he writes with little imagination, style or genuine feeling. Here is an example of painful writing: "Her pulse was racing and there was a cold sensation of fear in her chest. She was in the lions' den. If she were captured, nothing could save her." Ouch.

"Jackdaws," is replete with scenes of sex (both homosexual and heterosexual) and violence (the body count is high). However, with all of the manufactured excitement, this novel is a run-of-mill, rather dull and predictable spy story.

I have been a Ken Follett reader since Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca. In my mind nothing equals his novel, The Pillars of the Earth. With his latest effort, Jackdaws, he returns to the dark days of World War II.

It is May, 1944; 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 switch connecting France with Germany. Bombers have been unable to inflict to disrupt communications for more than a few hours at a time. The Allies want to disrupt communications for as long as possible so to delay warning of the pending invasion.

Felicity Clariet, known as Flick, a British Special Operations Executive secret agent, leads audacious, quickly-assembled team of female spies posing as cleaners, who hope to destroy the switch and Germany's ability to spread the word of the pending assualt on the beaches of Normandy.

The plot, unique characters and detail of his latest effort will keep you turing pages. Follett tells us that Jackdaws is based on a true story. The Special Operations Executive sent 50 women into France as secret agents, 36 survived.

It seems like Jackdaws is the first book I've read by Follett where the center of the story is WWII. Although I have not read many novels regarding this subject matter I will say that I was very impressed at the objective viewpoint the author had on the war. His characters are not merely good and evil; they are human beings in a war fighting for their lives. The people are doing what they think is necessary to win the war and thus end the war. Each character displays the true human quality that we all have about the natural hate for war.

The story is about a Female British Spy named Flick, whose job it is to cripple the communications link between Germany's Rommel and the German forces in occupied France. Without this communications link the occupation would need to route messages by courier thus making it impossible to properly communicate orders, as they need to be given. Flick and her British Superiors have come up with a plan to infiltrate the central communication link in France. The only thing stopping her from severing this link is a determined German operative named Dieter Franck.

The beginning grips you with an intense situation in which the British spy is on a clandestine team of spies carrying out a special operation against the Germans communication facility. Present is the handsome Franck who happens to be in the area checking up on German security. From that moment on the two are mingled in a cat and mouse game not so typical of the WWII spy-thriller genre.

I recommend reading this book if you are interested in the events leading up to D-day. And have enjoyed Follett's work in the past.

Although the reviews make it seem like a book about a bunch of British Female Spies, I tend to disagree. In my opinion the book was mostly focused on the aforementioned characters. Although 5 women accompany Flick, it's evident that she is the story's Protagonist and Franck the Antagonist.

A Place Called Freedom could have been a triumph for Ken Follett. Instead, it's an OK book ... a light, breezy read, but nothing special. It reads like a Cliff's Notes version of a great novel ... relationships and histories between characters are hinted at, alluded to, even stated ... but not explored. Characters come and go with little reason and less effect on the plot. Just as an example, the main character's twin sister ... his rock, his best friend, his motivation for escaping servitude, is killed. Her death and its impact is covered off in a few lines. The two protagonists knew each other as children (we're told) ... she the blueblood, he the son of the servant ... and yet this early relationship is unexplored, despite its obvious resonance through the later meetings. It's like Follett phoned this one in, doubly disappointing when you read - as in Pillars of the Earth - what this author is capable of doing when he sets his mind to it.

A historical novel that takes the reader from the coal mines of 18th century Scotland, where a male child is promised to the Lord of the land for 10 pounds at birth. He will then find himself a slave to the mines till he dies of the black lung or some mishap. It is Mack McAsh that stands up for his rights along with the rights of his fellow workers. A struggle that brings on a lifetime of hardship from the first pages of this book till the very end.

From the moment Mack meets Lizzie, the privileged daughter of a once wealthy landowner we know they are meant to be together, hence the predictability, but a good story none-the-less. This book seemed to span a lifetime as we moved from Scotland to London, then to a convict ship that leads us to a plantation in Virginia, and finally to the uncharted wilderness that existed west of the Cumberland Gap. The search for freedom is elusive but there for the taking if only one tries hard enough to overcome the obstacles.

This is my first book by Follett. I would give it 3½ stars if the option was available to me. The characters were interesting and I enjoyed covering so much territory. The author was knowledgeable and presented the material in an interesting manner that kept me reading on. It was just a bit too predictable for me. 2/14/01

What a very fine writer Ken Follett is! Having read "The eye of the needle" many years ago, and more recently, "Pillars of the earth" and enjoyed them both very much,I just finished reading "A place called freedom".It took only 2 days as I couldn't put it down and for 2 nights, read into the small hours.An indentured Scottish coal miner, Mack McAsh, tries to force the hand of the mine owner into treating the down trodden miners with compassion and fairness. He is railroaded by the system and tranported as a convict to Virginia. This is a tale of a mans inhuman treatment and his fight fot freedom in the New World.It's a great read,well written,exciting and unputdownable.It could well have been made into an actioner movie

This was written before the best selling Eye of the Needle back in 1976 and under a pseudonym. Follett considers it his best unsuccessful book. I consider it an interesting opportunity to see an early effort from a well known author. The story takes place in one day and involves about a half dozen people who have no idea how their lives are becoming interlinked by events. Were he to write the same story today, it would probably be tied together a bit differently and would be fleshed out a little more, but all the ingredients are there and if you have been a fan of this author, it is well worth your time to read this one.

I'm moved to add my opinion in defense of Paper Money and Ken Follett's substantial talent. It's all there from the beginning: his masterful plot design, his uncanny ability to humanize and give insight into "bad" characters. I too found the ending a little abrupt and lacking in traditional resolution. However, I would still highly recommend this to someone looking for a well crafted and propulsive "shorter" read.

This is the first Ken Follett I have read and I understand it is an early effort. This novel is a wonderful invocation of London and various types that were around in the late 60s and early 70s. In a short space it paints a rich canvass of characters and has a very clever plot.

The insight into characters and "the way things work" is sharp and the sex is well handled without becoming prurient. I was amazed at the talent here ("I normally read more "serious" authors) and this is a cut above other best selling authors I sometimes have read. I intend to explore his other novels.

Unfortunately the printed letters are too small to read this exellent book. I read it in German. I wanted to give this book to my wife as a present.

La trama del libro es buena, pero es muy poco de lo se habla sobre la genética es un libro más bien policial, me hubiera gustado más (por el estado de ánimo seguramente) si el título fuera otro, pues cuando uno cree que va a leer algo (genética en este caso) y el libro apenas menciona el tema baja el estado de ánimo hacia el libro.

Follet did it again!A page turner thriller!You have to read it! Other novels by Ken Follet that I strongly recommend are:
1.The hammer of Eden
2.The eye of a needle
3.A dangerous fortune
4.Lie down with the lions

This novel is a translation from a book originally written in French. Ken is the third author that attempted to translate this book into English. Visit the Ken Follett web site and learn the story behind this book. It's also titled The Heist of the Century and The Gentlemen of 16 July. Ken considers this book "a nightmare" that won't go away and he doesn't even recommend buying it.

It's fun, it's brilliant, the author as the main person are both geniuses and it's a true story

The plot is weak, the storyline is dull, the characters are shallow, and the writing is mediocre. There's nothing to this book. I read the whole thing between taking off from New York and landing in California. What a disappointment!

This book is dated, and the plot took a while to sink in for me. However, once I got into the swing of things, I enjoyed this book very much.

Because the amount of artwork by any given artist is finite, discovering that there may be an undiscovered work by a famous artist is a huge discovery in the art world. When an art student studying abroad hears that not all of Modigliani's works are available, she delightedly decides to find the one that was reputedly hidden during the War.

The many twists of the plot are difficult to follow until they tie together at the end of the book. The plots do fit nicely! but it is confusing to follow throughout the body of the book.

This is not Ken Follett's best work. However, for an early work, it's quite good; furthermore, it's a lot better than a lot of the drek that some authors are trying to pass off as literature.

so ugly review in the web page. no helpful and stop review this book for so stupid man. the book is good few people read it.