His weapon is the stiletto, his codename: The Needle. He is Hitler's prize undercover agent - a cold and professional killer. It is 1944 and weeks before D-Day. The Allies are disguising their invasion plans with a phoney armada of ships and planes. Their plan would be ruined if an enemy agent found out...and then The Needle does just that. Hunted by MI5, he leads a murderous trail across Britain to a waiting U-Boat. But he hasn't planned for a storm-battered island, and the remarkable young woman who lives there. "Eye of the Needle", an international bestseller, is a heart-racingly exciting tale about the fate of the war resting in the hands of a master spy, his opponent and a brave woman. 'An absolutely terrific thriller, so pulse-pounding, so ingenious in its plotting and so frighteningly realistic that you simply cannot stop reading' - "Publishers Weekly". 'A tense, marvellously detailed suspense thriller based on a solid foundation of fact' - "Sunday Times".
Eye of the Needle was Follet’s first book published in the U.S., and it’s no surprise that it’s sold somewhere around 10 million copies worldwide. I consider Follett’s WWII books to be his best. He is able to put us smack dab in the middle of the war, usually in a situation we wouldn’t expect. Here, he takes a single question — What if the Germans knew the Allies were attacking Normandy? — and turns it into a thrilling cross-country chase that culminates in an unexpected showdown on a tiny island. He gives us characters that are three-dimensional and complex, even if they aren’t major characters in the story. Perhaps most interesting was Follett’s fictional Third Reich.
I was fortunate enough to see Ken Follett speak at the National Book Festival this year, and now I’m a bigger fan than ever. How can you not like a man who tops off every writing day with a glass of champagne?
