Jackdaws

I would have rated this higher, but I found the first torture scene very disturbing. Some friends convinced me to continue with the book; and I am very glad I did, but I was always waiting for that next torture scene with immense trepidation. I liked the role of women in WW2.

If your in to fiction, WWII and dont mind a mostly female cast and lead then this is a good read. Its chapter switches from British female agent and Nazi Intel Officer...Neither has a perfect good/bad life and Follet writes well enough to humanize a Nazi.

I found this book to be a little slow in the beginning but still good enough to keep my interest. As it went on it became more and more exciting and gripping until in the finish it was difficult to put down. An excellent read.

I bought this for my husband for Christmas and he finally gave up a few chapters in and said sorry, he appreciated me trying but he was disgusted and couldn't keep reading. He says it has so much porn in it that it's too much to even try to skip over. He told me some of the gross stuff and I am horrified. Thanks alot Ken Follett, for nothing. I will be telling everyone how disgusting this is. It's going straight in the garbage.

Felicity Clariet is a British secret agent leading a Resistance movement with her husband to destroy a crucial telephone exchange connecting the French telephone system to Germany. With the D-Day invasion imminent, they must ensure that the system is down long enough to prevent an early warning of the invasion. When the operation goes wrong, they barely escape with their lives. Felicity, a.k.a. Flick, vows to return with a ragtag band of women to avenge the deaths of the Resistance fighters and destroy the communication system before the Allied invasion.
Follet’s attention to historical detail does not disappoint. Jackdaws is the code name for the all-girl team Flick assembles for the task. The plot is based on the true story of 50 women sent into France as secret agents. Dieter Franck is the German intelligence officer who serves as a Flick’s worthy foe and intellectual equal. He is captivated by her beauty and intellect, even as he seeks to destroy her. The suspense is heightened by a fast-flowing narrative that bounces between the protagonist and antagonist like a tennis ball. The reader’s sympathy alternates between the two at a dizzying pace. We see the traps set by the Franck before Flick does. Follet’s compelling language and deft plot twists make the book a real page-turner and keeps us glued to the edge of our seats.
Of particular interest to me was the conflicting consciousness of the two main characters whose life-or-death decisions placed so many others in danger. I would have liked to see more of their internal struggles as each one sought to justify the means toward the ends they were pursuing.
I am a great fan of Ken Follet, but I am always a bit disappointed by his penchant for happy endings. The resolution in his stories always seems a bit forced. The antagonist’s final redemption is never quite believable.

The characters were well developed. I felt I knew them. I enjoy a book that has strong women in it. It feels like I can relate to their strength even though my challenges are not extreme like those depicted here. The lead character's determination was remarkable. Inspiring.

On the eve of D-Day, the Nazis are trying to crush the French resistance. Felicity Clairet of Britain’s Special Operations branch is working with the resistance in Northern France. After a failed attempt at taking out a European telephone exchange, Felicity is once more going after the exchange. Her plan is to create an all-female unit posing as a cleaning staff to carry out the mission. After not being able to find Brits who can speak French, she recruits non-professionals who speak French, and has to crash train them on the operation.

This novel is typical of other Follett novels in terms of writing style, which I find enjoyable to read. It has plenty of action and tension, which Follett can be relied upon to deliver. The overall believability is not that strong. There are also some plot holes that leave a little to be desired. While I did enjoy reading this novel, it is not at the same level as some other Follett novels that I have read in the past.

Carl Alves – author of Blood Street

British undercover agents are parachuting to the occupied France to collaborate with the local Resistance against the Nazis during WW2. The agents are female, the target is a telephone exchange that handles most of the calls to and from Germany, and the time is one week before the Invasion of Normandy. Follett blends these major ingredients into a highly dynamic narrative full of twists and turns.

There is a strong female lead character, who is chased by an equally smart (albeit less lucky) German officer. It is to the author’s credit that he portraits the main villain of the book as a human being, not just a Nazi killing machine. Since the hastily assembled team is not composed of unerring superheroes, but a bunch of untrained women, often ignorant of imminent danger, there are many mishaps that their experienced leader must resolve on the go. Many of the characters die during the mission, which only adds to the realism of the story.

What I did not like was the romantic side of the narrative, especially the last chapter. An action-packed espionage novel can be, and will be, a success; there’s really no need to cater to the taste of Danielle Steel’s fans. It was probably for the sake of such audience that Follett sometimes repeats the already said, being unnecessarily explicit as if his readers could not put two and two together.

In spite of these minor drawbacks, the book is a page-turner. Ken Follett’s writing is not flawless, but he certainly knows how to entertain. I actually found this novel more enjoyable and believable than the much praised “Pillars of the Earth”.

First off, I feel this is a 3.5 but I'm giving it 4, as some of the reviewers on here have been too harsh.

JACKDAWS takes the standard D-Day spy stories but twists it by focusing on the Historical female agents, or, as they were known, something of the unsung heroes.

This particular tale focuses on a female agent who is trying to knock down the phone lines of an SS HQ but needs to do it as cleaning ladies. So, after failing her first attempt, she heads back to the UK where she, and other govt officials, recruit several female agents for training.

All of these women are untrained and have to do a crash course in spycraft.

Thereafter, the next half of the book entails the women parachuting into France, some of them getting caught or killed and then moving in on the mission. Expect the usual "B" love story.

Story is very good in pacing, and, while some of the characters have the archetypal element, I felt he did a good job creating a diverse selection.

When he wrote EYE OF THE NEEDLE the market was less saturated with WWII stories. Now, they're all over the place, so, he has less of the market, the stories overlap more and expectations are higher for newer and newer stories.

This one is above average to good but not quite either in definition. If you want to read him for the first time, I'd recommend EYE OF THE NEEDLE.

OVERALL GRADE: B

I loved the premise behind Ken Follett Jackdaws. As somebody that knows a lot about communications, I thought “finally, somebody gets it. In battle, communications is everything.” What was really unconventional was that Ken Follett’s dirty dozen was an all-female cast. This made for a really unique story that kept me fully engaged right up to the end. Overall a fantastic WWII story that left me wondering if something like this could have actually occurred.

Jackdaws is an exciting espionage thriller set in World War II with a bit of a twist: it's about a team of British spies operating behind enemy lines, who are all women (including a couple of lesbians)...well, and one German transvestite.

The heroines are very interesting (particularly the transvestite), but Follett's greatest achievement in this novel is perhaps his villain, a German interrogator in charge of rooting out and breaking up the French resistance. He is not averse to using extreme brutal torture to extract information if necessary (and there is some very graphic violence in the novel, but with the Nazis as a subject that's pretty much inevitable), but he is extremely intelligent and would rather use trickery or emotional manipulation when those methods would serve the purpose. In fact, he finds the methods of his fellow Nazis rather distasteful.

At the same time, Follett portrays the lead heroine, Flick, as somewhat cold and steely, willing to kill the enemy in cold blood to protect her mission. Many writers today would use this juxtaposition to insinuate that the Nazis weren't such monsters as they are often made out to be and that the Allies were just as brutal and vicious. But in Follett's hands, the Nazi interrogator's supposed "scruples" are clearly rank hypocrisy which only serves to highlight the atrocious nature of the ends he pursues and the means he employs, while Flick's actions are underlain by a righteous determination not to suffer the guilt which rightly belongs to the aggressors against whom she fights. Very well done.

Kate Reading's narration of this audio edition is excellent, bringing out the emotional depths of Follett's story. I would definitely recommend it.

Jackdaws is an exciting espionage thriller set in World War II with a bit of a twist: it's about a team of British spies operating behind enemy lines, who are all women (including a couple of lesbians)...well, and one German transvestite.

The heroines are very interesting (particularly the transvestite), but Follett's greatest achievement in this novel is perhaps his villain, a German interrogator in charge of rooting out and breaking up the French resistance. He is not averse to using extreme brutal torture to extract information if necessary (and there is some very graphic violence in the novel, but with the Nazis as a subject that's pretty much inevitable), but he is extremely intelligent and would rather use trickery or emotional manipulation when those methods would serve the purpose. In fact, he finds the methods of his fellow Nazis rather distasteful.

At the same time, Follett portrays the lead heroine, Flick, as somewhat cold and steely, willing to kill the enemy in cold blood to protect her mission. Many writers today would use this juxtaposition to insinuate that the Nazis weren't such monsters as they are often made out to be and that the Allies were just as brutal and vicious. But in Follett's hands, the Nazi interrogator's supposed "scruples" are clearly rank hypocrisy which only serves to highlight the atrocious nature of the ends he pursues and the means he employs, while Flick's actions are underlain by a righteous determination not to suffer the guilt which rightly belongs to the aggressors against whom she fights. Very well done.

Kate Reading's narration of this audio edition is excellent, bringing out the emotional depths of Follett's story. I would definitely recommend it.

I have sometimes found Ken Follett too verbose but this book was an excellent fast read with a great female lead character. Flick Clairet is one of a select group of women helping the French Resistance during the final years of the Second World War. She is married to a French man, the leader of the resistance in Reims and in the opening sequence we see a group of them fail to overcome a telephone exchange that is crucial to the Germans. ''Several of the local resistance members are captured, tortured and a German intelligence officer is able to start unravelling the underground team there. He is a ruthless torturer although we also see his cultured side and his love for a Jewish mistress. He even gets terrible migraines when he has to torture people so Follett manages to create a villain who is still believable and not a caricature of the evil Nazi.

After the failure of the team, Flick is determined to get back to the exchange and blow it up, creating a critical gap in communications at the same time as the Allied forces invade. The timing is crucial and the book is basically her mission back to Reims in order to accomplish this task. The only way in is to recruit other women to act as an all-female team disguised as cleaners. In that way they can get into the exchange and blow up the communications. The women Flick recruits have been rejected by other services and are generally unsuitable, a ragtag bunch including a convicted murderer, a Cockney explosives expert thief, a lesbian aristocrat and a transvestite whose lover had been killed by the Germans. The journey the women take, the danger they get into is the crux of the story. No spoilers but as in real life, they don't all make it.

Flick is characterized as a hard soldier in that she is able to shoot a traitor and and fight in hand to hand combat, but she also has a softer side and is able to love and think about marriage. I like these types of characters and she made the story believable. She and Dieter, the Nazi interrogator are by far the strongest characters in the book and it really was a battle between these two throughout the book.

Although you know that of course the Allies will win in the end, you still don't know until the last pages whether the team will survive. I enjoyed the book, reading it on a windy, wild Auckland day in pretty much one sitting. It's a thriller with an intelligent female heroine. Recommended!

Follett is probably best known for his wartime spy stories, e.g., "Key to Rebecca" and "Eye of the Needle." We find these novels fairly good, but were totally wowed by his two medieval tomes; yet sorely disappointed in a story he wrote in contemporary time ("Third Twin").

In this tale, it's just a week or so before D-Day, and in France, everybody seems to know the big day is imminent, including the Germans; and the French Resistance is gearing up to create as much accompanying havoc as possible. Meanwhile a cathedral has been converted into a major telephone switching center vital to Nazi efforts to communicate throughout their occupied territory and back to Berlin. When a wily female Brit spy "Flick" leads a small renegade group to bomb the facility by hand, their efforts fail when bad intelligence fails to reveal the size of the Gestapo and other forces guarding the center. Flick escapes back to England, where she and her supervisors decide on a risky scheme to create a six-woman group (code named the Jackdaws) to go back disguised as cleaning ladies and try again with more of an "inside job" approach. However, a member of Rommel's staff, a clever officer named Dieter Franck, who witnessed the first abortive attempt on the communications center, tortures some of the captured members from the earlier raid and learns enough to play a cat and mouse game with Flick all the way to the second attempt.

Follett has crafted a terrifically suspenseful plot, and it's easy to root for Flick and her cohorts - but even the Nazi's show some signs of humanity. And while the outcome is somewhat predictable, plenty of deaths occur along the way to remind that, after all, it's war. If the author's war stories suit your taste, "Jackdaws" seems a fine entry in Follett's novels of that genre.

Jackdaws is set in occupied France in the ten days preceding the D Day invasion of June 6, 1944. The basic story line is almost exactly the same as The Dirty Dozen, but this time it's a half dozen, and they're an all woman team. Like The Dirty Dozen we have a band of rejects, some criminals, and all with her own reason for wanting to strike a death blow in the Nazi beast's backside as the allies are massing to hit the beaches of Normandy. The target is a strategically important telephone exchange in an old chateau, the destruction of which would make the Nazi occupiers more vulnerable to the allied invasion.

The name of the book comes from a poem by Richard Harris Barham (1788 - 1845) titled "The Jackdaw of Rheims." (Rheims seems to be the Anglicized spelling of Reims). A Jackdaw is a crow-like bird known for stealing bright objects. The poem deals with a bird that stole a ring from a Cardinal, who, in order to flush the thief out, places a curse on him. When the jackdaw shows up showing the ill effects of the curse, his crime is exposed.

Author Ken Follett selects Reims, France for this novel's action and uses the name "Jackdaw," as the British Special Operations Executive dubbed them, for the female dirty half dozen parachuted behind enemy lines to coordinate with the French Resistance to blow up the telephone exchange. The leader of the Jackdaws is a special operations veteran, Felicity, or "Flick," Clairet, married to the leader of the Reims Resistance, Michel.

Opposing our superheroine is Major Deiter Franck, an active duty German policeman whose specialty is torture-based interrogations. We know that any member of the Jackdaw team that is captured will suffer the cruelty beyond the reader's imagination. We are not disappointed.

The Jackdaws face operational obstacles from the start, and the combination of their amateurism and Major Franck's professionalism results in one disaster after another. As the weather clears over the English Channel, and the full moon illuminates the Reims countryside, the plan goes forward despite the long odds against it. As explosives rip through the old chateau, Franck captures or kills most of the Jackdaws and closes in on the surviving three as they await their airlift out of France. The tension builds to a climactic shootout on the runway.

Follett is a master storyteller and he deserves top marks for Jackdaws despite some minor faults. 1) It would be unrealistic in the extreme for British Intelligence to suspect that the Nazis were using Helicopter's radio. 2) There was no way Paul could have known that Chatelle was in total darkness. 3) Franck wouldn't have been alerted because two middle class French women were eating at the Ritz. 4) How could Franck have known that Flick had killed Stepanie? 5) Flick assumes everyone talks when captured and assumes Franck has their information, but she fails to assume that Franck has Michel's information though his capture is nearly certain.

Ken Follett's Jackdaws is everything a thriller should be: great characters, non-stop action, and steadily increasing stakes. Adding the historically accurate backdrop of D Day along with the compressed time frame is the work of a pro.

On the eve of D-Day, the Nazis are trying to crush the French resistance. Felicity Clairet of Britain’s Special Operations branch is working with the resistance in Northern France. After a failed attempt at taking out a European telephone exchange, Felicity is once more going after the exchange. Her plan is to create an all-female unit posing as a cleaning staff to carry out the mission. After not being able to find Brits who can speak French, she recruits non-professionals who speak French, and has to crash train them on the operation.

This novel is typical of other Follett novels in terms of writing style, which I find enjoyable to read. It has plenty of action and tension, which Follett can be relied upon to deliver. The overall believability is not that strong. There are also some plot holes that leave a little to be desired. While I did enjoy reading this novel, it is not at the same level as some other Follett novels that I have read in the past.

Carl Alves – author of Blood Street

British undercover agents are parachuting to the occupied France to collaborate with the local Resistance against the Nazis during WW2. The agents are female, the target is a telephone exchange that handles most of the calls to and from Germany, and the time is one week before the Invasion of Normandy. Follett blends these major ingredients into a highly dynamic narrative full of twists and turns.

There is a strong female lead character, who is chased by an equally smart (albeit less lucky) German officer. It is to the author’s credit that he portraits the main villain of the book as a human being, not just a Nazi killing machine. Since the hastily assembled team is not composed of unerring superheroes, but a bunch of untrained women, often ignorant of imminent danger, there are many mishaps that their experienced leader must resolve on the go. Many of the characters die during the mission, which only adds to the realism of the story.

What I did not like was the romantic side of the narrative, especially the last chapter. An action-packed espionage novel can be, and will be, a success; there’s really no need to cater to the taste of Danielle Steel’s fans. It was probably for the sake of such audience that Follett sometimes repeats the already said, being unnecessarily explicit as if his readers could not put two and two together.

In spite of these minor drawbacks, the book is a page-turner. Ken Follett’s writing is not flawless, but he certainly knows how to entertain. I actually found this novel more enjoyable and believable than the much praised “Pillars of the Earth”.

The characters were well developed. I felt I knew them. I enjoy a book that has strong women in it. It feels like I can relate to their strength even though my challenges are not extreme like those depicted here. The lead character's determination was remarkable. Inspiring.

First off, I feel this is a 3.5 but I'm giving it 4, as some of the reviewers on here have been too harsh.

JACKDAWS takes the standard D-Day spy stories but twists it by focusing on the Historical female agents, or, as they were known, something of the unsung heroes.

This particular tale focuses on a female agent who is trying to knock down the phone lines of an SS HQ but needs to do it as cleaning ladies. So, after failing her first attempt, she heads back to the UK where she, and other govt officials, recruit several female agents for training.

All of these women are untrained and have to do a crash course in spycraft.

Thereafter, the next half of the book entails the women parachuting into France, some of them getting caught or killed and then moving in on the mission. Expect the usual "B" love story.

Story is very good in pacing, and, while some of the characters have the archetypal element, I felt he did a good job creating a diverse selection.

When he wrote EYE OF THE NEEDLE the market was less saturated with WWII stories. Now, they're all over the place, so, he has less of the market, the stories overlap more and expectations are higher for newer and newer stories.

This one is above average to good but not quite either in definition. If you want to read him for the first time, I'd recommend EYE OF THE NEEDLE.

OVERALL GRADE: B

I loved the premise behind Ken Follett Jackdaws. As somebody that knows a lot about communications, I thought “finally, somebody gets it. In battle, communications is everything.” What was really unconventional was that Ken Follett’s dirty dozen was an all-female cast. This made for a really unique story that kept me fully engaged right up to the end. Overall a fantastic WWII story that left me wondering if something like this could have actually occurred.

Jackdaws is an exciting espionage thriller set in World War II with a bit of a twist: it's about a team of British spies operating behind enemy lines, who are all women (including a couple of lesbians)...well, and one German transvestite.

The heroines are very interesting (particularly the transvestite), but Follett's greatest achievement in this novel is perhaps his villain, a German interrogator in charge of rooting out and breaking up the French resistance. He is not averse to using extreme brutal torture to extract information if necessary (and there is some very graphic violence in the novel, but with the Nazis as a subject that's pretty much inevitable), but he is extremely intelligent and would rather use trickery or emotional manipulation when those methods would serve the purpose. In fact, he finds the methods of his fellow Nazis rather distasteful.

At the same time, Follett portrays the lead heroine, Flick, as somewhat cold and steely, willing to kill the enemy in cold blood to protect her mission. Many writers today would use this juxtaposition to insinuate that the Nazis weren't such monsters as they are often made out to be and that the Allies were just as brutal and vicious. But in Follett's hands, the Nazi interrogator's supposed "scruples" are clearly rank hypocrisy which only serves to highlight the atrocious nature of the ends he pursues and the means he employs, while Flick's actions are underlain by a righteous determination not to suffer the guilt which rightly belongs to the aggressors against whom she fights. Very well done.

Kate Reading's narration of this audio edition is excellent, bringing out the emotional depths of Follett's story. I would definitely recommend it.

Jackdaws is an exciting espionage thriller set in World War II with a bit of a twist: it's about a team of British spies operating behind enemy lines, who are all women (including a couple of lesbians)...well, and one German transvestite.

The heroines are very interesting (particularly the transvestite), but Follett's greatest achievement in this novel is perhaps his villain, a German interrogator in charge of rooting out and breaking up the French resistance. He is not averse to using extreme brutal torture to extract information if necessary (and there is some very graphic violence in the novel, but with the Nazis as a subject that's pretty much inevitable), but he is extremely intelligent and would rather use trickery or emotional manipulation when those methods would serve the purpose. In fact, he finds the methods of his fellow Nazis rather distasteful.

At the same time, Follett portrays the lead heroine, Flick, as somewhat cold and steely, willing to kill the enemy in cold blood to protect her mission. Many writers today would use this juxtaposition to insinuate that the Nazis weren't such monsters as they are often made out to be and that the Allies were just as brutal and vicious. But in Follett's hands, the Nazi interrogator's supposed "scruples" are clearly rank hypocrisy which only serves to highlight the atrocious nature of the ends he pursues and the means he employs, while Flick's actions are underlain by a righteous determination not to suffer the guilt which rightly belongs to the aggressors against whom she fights. Very well done.

Kate Reading's narration of this audio edition is excellent, bringing out the emotional depths of Follett's story. I would definitely recommend it.

I have sometimes found Ken Follett too verbose but this book was an excellent fast read with a great female lead character. Flick Clairet is one of a select group of women helping the French Resistance during the final years of the Second World War. She is married to a French man, the leader of the resistance in Reims and in the opening sequence we see a group of them fail to overcome a telephone exchange that is crucial to the Germans. ''Several of the local resistance members are captured, tortured and a German intelligence officer is able to start unravelling the underground team there. He is a ruthless torturer although we also see his cultured side and his love for a Jewish mistress. He even gets terrible migraines when he has to torture people so Follett manages to create a villain who is still believable and not a caricature of the evil Nazi.

After the failure of the team, Flick is determined to get back to the exchange and blow it up, creating a critical gap in communications at the same time as the Allied forces invade. The timing is crucial and the book is basically her mission back to Reims in order to accomplish this task. The only way in is to recruit other women to act as an all-female team disguised as cleaners. In that way they can get into the exchange and blow up the communications. The women Flick recruits have been rejected by other services and are generally unsuitable, a ragtag bunch including a convicted murderer, a Cockney explosives expert thief, a lesbian aristocrat and a transvestite whose lover had been killed by the Germans. The journey the women take, the danger they get into is the crux of the story. No spoilers but as in real life, they don't all make it.

Flick is characterized as a hard soldier in that she is able to shoot a traitor and and fight in hand to hand combat, but she also has a softer side and is able to love and think about marriage. I like these types of characters and she made the story believable. She and Dieter, the Nazi interrogator are by far the strongest characters in the book and it really was a battle between these two throughout the book.

Although you know that of course the Allies will win in the end, you still don't know until the last pages whether the team will survive. I enjoyed the book, reading it on a windy, wild Auckland day in pretty much one sitting. It's a thriller with an intelligent female heroine. Recommended!

Follett is probably best known for his wartime spy stories, e.g., "Key to Rebecca" and "Eye of the Needle." We find these novels fairly good, but were totally wowed by his two medieval tomes; yet sorely disappointed in a story he wrote in contemporary time ("Third Twin").

In this tale, it's just a week or so before D-Day, and in France, everybody seems to know the big day is imminent, including the Germans; and the French Resistance is gearing up to create as much accompanying havoc as possible. Meanwhile a cathedral has been converted into a major telephone switching center vital to Nazi efforts to communicate throughout their occupied territory and back to Berlin. When a wily female Brit spy "Flick" leads a small renegade group to bomb the facility by hand, their efforts fail when bad intelligence fails to reveal the size of the Gestapo and other forces guarding the center. Flick escapes back to England, where she and her supervisors decide on a risky scheme to create a six-woman group (code named the Jackdaws) to go back disguised as cleaning ladies and try again with more of an "inside job" approach. However, a member of Rommel's staff, a clever officer named Dieter Franck, who witnessed the first abortive attempt on the communications center, tortures some of the captured members from the earlier raid and learns enough to play a cat and mouse game with Flick all the way to the second attempt.

Follett has crafted a terrifically suspenseful plot, and it's easy to root for Flick and her cohorts - but even the Nazi's show some signs of humanity. And while the outcome is somewhat predictable, plenty of deaths occur along the way to remind that, after all, it's war. If the author's war stories suit your taste, "Jackdaws" seems a fine entry in Follett's novels of that genre.

Jackdaws is set in occupied France in the ten days preceding the D Day invasion of June 6, 1944. The basic story line is almost exactly the same as The Dirty Dozen, but this time it's a half dozen, and they're an all woman team. Like The Dirty Dozen we have a band of rejects, some criminals, and all with her own reason for wanting to strike a death blow in the Nazi beast's backside as the allies are massing to hit the beaches of Normandy. The target is a strategically important telephone exchange in an old chateau, the destruction of which would make the Nazi occupiers more vulnerable to the allied invasion.

The name of the book comes from a poem by Richard Harris Barham (1788 - 1845) titled "The Jackdaw of Rheims." (Rheims seems to be the Anglicized spelling of Reims). A Jackdaw is a crow-like bird known for stealing bright objects. The poem deals with a bird that stole a ring from a Cardinal, who, in order to flush the thief out, places a curse on him. When the jackdaw shows up showing the ill effects of the curse, his crime is exposed.

Author Ken Follett selects Reims, France for this novel's action and uses the name "Jackdaw," as the British Special Operations Executive dubbed them, for the female dirty half dozen parachuted behind enemy lines to coordinate with the French Resistance to blow up the telephone exchange. The leader of the Jackdaws is a special operations veteran, Felicity, or "Flick," Clairet, married to the leader of the Reims Resistance, Michel.

Opposing our superheroine is Major Deiter Franck, an active duty German policeman whose specialty is torture-based interrogations. We know that any member of the Jackdaw team that is captured will suffer the cruelty beyond the reader's imagination. We are not disappointed.

The Jackdaws face operational obstacles from the start, and the combination of their amateurism and Major Franck's professionalism results in one disaster after another. As the weather clears over the English Channel, and the full moon illuminates the Reims countryside, the plan goes forward despite the long odds against it. As explosives rip through the old chateau, Franck captures or kills most of the Jackdaws and closes in on the surviving three as they await their airlift out of France. The tension builds to a climactic shootout on the runway.

Follett is a master storyteller and he deserves top marks for Jackdaws despite some minor faults. 1) It would be unrealistic in the extreme for British Intelligence to suspect that the Nazis were using Helicopter's radio. 2) There was no way Paul could have known that Chatelle was in total darkness. 3) Franck wouldn't have been alerted because two middle class French women were eating at the Ritz. 4) How could Franck have known that Flick had killed Stepanie? 5) Flick assumes everyone talks when captured and assumes Franck has their information, but she fails to assume that Franck has Michel's information though his capture is nearly certain.

Ken Follett's Jackdaws is everything a thriller should be: great characters, non-stop action, and steadily increasing stakes. Adding the historically accurate backdrop of D Day along with the compressed time frame is the work of a pro.

The story, true to history in many ways, brings alive the horror of war, the misery of loss of life, and the cruelty of people. It made me despise torture. Yet I found myself wanting to crush the enemy, wanting to make the Gestapo and the German officer, who was a serious threat to the mission of the Jackdaws (a group of untrained women spies led by Felicity Clairet, a British secret agent), suffer horribly.

This is a book I can highly recommend as an exciting read, one that elevates the status of women--even if we don't like to hear about tough bitches who are as brave as men--and yet is balanced in its treatment of both sides of conflict, causing me to note how easy it is to get caught up in us-versus-them thinking--perhaps the root cause of so much evil we perpetrate against one another.

Since my historical fiction novel,Unexpected Journey, was recently published by a small press, I was also interested in studying the historical aspect of Jackdaws. It far surpassed my expectations in its factual accounts, its sense of story, and its depth of characterization. The people, British, German, and French, were complex, and made me wonder if the characters in my novel are nearly as real. I hope they are, and I hope my novel goes even a tenth the distance of raising consciousness and awareness the way Jackdaws does.

Jackdaws is a book from one of my favourite non-genre categories: World War II spy fiction. I usually find these books to be page-turners, and this one is no exception. Follett ratchets up the tension, sprinkles a couple of interesting characters into the batter, and then hits "blend." The result is a taut thriller that is very pleasing to the palate.
Follett presents a thriller that will make you keep reading, no matter the fact that the light should have been turned off long ago. The plot twists and turns until it's almost pretzel-shaped, with Dieter getting ever closer to his goal. In a way, it is almost reminiscent of The Dirty Dozen, except that the people in question aren't all criminals, their just misfits. They are thrown together in a haphazard manner and expected to pull of a mission in enemy-occupied France. While it is slightly unbelievable, Follett avoids the cliché of having everybody become crack secret agents once they are in France. Mistakes happen, stupid things are done, and Flick ends up having to improvise mightily. I found this a major plus, because you didn't always know what was going to happen, even if the ultimate outcome wasn't always in doubt.
Follett concentrates on three characters: Flick, Dieter, and an American officer named Paul Chancellor, who becomes romantically interested in Flick. This provides a good narrative force for the story, as the viewpoints are limited and we see a lot of the other characters only through these three pairs of eyes. I think it made it more interesting, and it also emphasized the personal nature of the story as Dieter and Flick interact even when they're not together. In fact, while I found Paul interesting in his own right, I think the story would have worked better without him, or at least without his viewpoint. It would have narrowed the focus even further, and made the inevitable meeting all the richer.
Flick is a very dynamic character, well-rounded and interesting to read about. She's torn because she's constantly away from her husband, and she doesn't trust him with the other resistance fighters. He's always been a lady's man. She's also brutally efficient when necessary and she's quick on her feet. I really liked her, and I thought she made a wonderful protagonist. Paul makes a good foil for her, despite what I said above. I did find the sections from his point of view to be kind of dull, though. He doesn't add much to the mix that he couldn't have added as a minor character.
Dieter, on the other hand, is fascinating. He's certainly the villain of the book. He's a Nazi officer through and through. But he's humanized as well. He finds that he's falling in love with his French mistress and he truly seems to care for her. He doesn't know what is going to happen after this invasion, but he ultimately decides that he wants to be with her afterward. On the other hand, he's capable of being brutal (though Follett provides a character in Sergeant Baker, who's just a sadist, as a counterpoint to Dieter). He doesn't like torture despite being good at it, and he even remarks that this makes the best interrogator. If the interrogator enjoys the pain too much, he loses sight of the goal and won't be very efficient. I found him very interesting to read about, despite not liking him in the least. He made the perfect villain, and his fate is actually a little surprising.
Follett falls a little short in the other characters, though, especially the women. The other Germans are rather faceless, but that's their job in the story: to be the strongmen for Dieter to use. But the women, I think, should be more important than they turn out to be. They get a lot of characterization as Flick recruits and trains them, but once they drop into France, they become almost invisible. The only one who gets much characterization is Ruby, and that's because she's effectively Flick's second in command. The others get short shrift, and it's too bad. They appeared to be interesting characters at the beginning. I'm not saying they should be viewpoint characters, but more should have been done with them than actually happened. They fulfill their roles, but they aren't very interesting doing it.
There are some choppy places in the book where Follett's prose and plotting fails him too. At times, Follett over-writes, emphasizing things that don't need to be. He makes a point of saying that only two characters in a scene know something, and then he says it again during the conversation with the other people in the scene. It was distracting. Also, there is one point where Flick and her party shoot two guards, but when Dieter comes upon them, one of them is still alive enough to gasp out what happened. Flick has been shown to be cautious to the point of paranoia and efficient to the point that she never leaves anything done half way. Yet she doesn't slit this guard's throat to make sure he's dead? I didn't buy it. It seemed like the guard was only alive so Dieter could find out what he wanted to know. It smacked of author intervention. Niggling things like this are spread throughout the book, never actually killing it but always sitting in the back of your mind.
Despite these flaws, however, I found I could not put this book down. I raced through it because I wanted to see what would happen next. It is a great example of the genre and an exciting read. If you like this sort of story, you should pick it up.
Warning for the squeamish: there are a couple of torture scenes that you may find unsettling, especially the first one.
David Roy

Like some other bestselling authors (namely John Grisham and Tom Clancy), Follett's last books flopped in the critics' and customers' reviews. "The third twin", "Code to zero" and "Hammer of eden" were thrashed from left and from right, and in my opinion deservedly so. Follett is a talented author, but in these three books it seems he chose subjects that didn't appeal to the general public. Besides, his style of wrtiting was different from the successful one that made books like "Pillars of the Earth" and "Eye of the needle" become most wanted among legions of Follett's fans. It looked like the author himself lost interest in his books, and his fans didn't take it lightly.
These facts may be true, and the proof is that Follett wrote two thrillers in sequence, less than one year apart, going back to the subject and the atmosphere he knows best: World War II. It seems his public liked the change. At least, the reviews are a lot kinder than before.
"Jackdaws" is the story of a group of women lead by secret agent Flick Clairet. Their mission is to parachute into occupied France, and blow-up a telephone exchange that will help provide the security the Allies need on D-day. OK. That's a good subject. The plot in "Jackdaws" is interesting and the pace is very fast. In fact, the very opening scene is a pistol shooting between the Gestapo and agents of the french Resistence. The chapters are all full of action, and Follett doesn't let the rhythm slow down. Yes, it seems he's back on track.
But there are some problems. I was left with the impression that, though the plot is interesting, it's somewhat thin, and Follett had to struggle hard to keep the reader's full-time attention. That's why there are so many cold-blooded murders, shootings, etc. One other problem is about the characters. Flick Clairet and the nazi torturer, Dieter Franck, are both cool (enemies at haeart), but also full of contradictions. Sometimes what they did and said was plainly wrong. And all other characters are shallow to the point of oblivion. Follett tried to spice things up: there's homosexualism, a transexual, one (almost hot) lesbian scene. But it didn't work out as well as he intended, because he concentrated to much of the book's focus on the two main characters.
I give "Jackdaws" 4 stars because, even if it's not Follett's best, it kept me up reading way after midnight. And also because Follett shows that he worries about his readers. It's like he's thinking: "OK, I tried to change subjects, but maybe I didn't do my homework so well. I'll go back to World War II, give my constant readers (as Stephen King would say) two good books on that subject, and then I'll do a better research on future stories that are not about WWII". Let's hope this is true.
Grade 8.3/10

I typically steer away from war stories because they simply don't interest me. In addition, I'm not too familiar with K. Follett's works. But based upon some of the positive reviews, I decided to try this book. I'm glad I did. It was a pretty good and involved story.
First let me say, the first few chapters or so of the book were pretty hard for me to get into. A few times, I started to just give up, but I persisted and persistence paid off. If you can make it past the first few chapters -- which are setting up the story so that you understand actions and motivations that will follow -- than you're in for a good read.
The plot. The plot is good. The setting is war times -- just before D-Day, and the place is France. A British female spy, Flick, is charged with a mission that must be carried out, despite the costs, in order to cripple the German's war efforts. Flick puts together a team of women that must help her get the job done. Unfortunately, the team needs a lot of work before they're capable of doing anything besides fainting or crying at the sight of a gun. The odds of a successful mission don't look good. Once the team is established, what follows is a story that quickly moves ever closer to their ultimate goal -- fulfilling their mission -- while at the same time, providing you with an interesting glimpse of their lives and in some cases, loves. Yes, there's some romance, both on the German side and the British side of the story. While this is not a romance novel, the romance just seems to fit and is quite appropriate since it helps to tell the story of the women's lives and adds depth. Because of this, the characters come alive in the story and you'll understand the turmoil that Flick feels as she makes some of the hard decisions that she has to make.
The authors descriptions of setting helps too. I was easily able to "slip" into the time frame of the story and see the events as they occurred. Everything isn't wine and roses. I mean, this IS war and bad things happen to good people. Hopefully you're not squeamish because you'll be "there" as those bad things happen. Fortunately though, good things happen to good people too, and you'll be there as well.
The story is filled with suspense, danger, and a good bit of action. You'll feel as if you want to run, duck or hide along with the characters. All of the action isn't running, shooting, etc. kind of action, but it is action that keeps the story moving forward at a pretty nice pace. And yes, some of it is nail-biting action.
The dialog is good and appropriate. Nothing said or done sounds phony or contrived just to move the story forward. It fits.
I'm not a historian or a war buff, so while this story is based on a true story, if anything said or done is inaccurate, I wouldn't know, nor would I care. I wanted to be entertained and the book succeeded in that respect.
Bottom line, I would recommend this book even if you, like me, typically do not read war stories. Yes, the war is the reason and background for the story, but the focus is the characters and their actions, and that adds up to a very good read.

Jackdaws is another great book by Follett. The D-Day invasion is looming and the Allies are trying to cripple the Germans in anyway possible. The hope to cripple a telephone exchange located in France and enlist the aid of the French Resistance to do so. With time running out and other efforts failing, the Allies turn to Flick Clairet to lead an all women team into Germany to disable the telephone exchange, thus crippling the German communications right before the invasion.

Dieter Frank is a German officer working under the authority of Rommell and trying to stop the resistance. Frank is a smart man who catches many members of the resistance but always seems to be one step behind. Frank is a somewhat sympathetic character who views duty as the ultimate call, and is great at torturing prisoners, even though he doesn't enjoy it.

Set over 10 days, Follett moves along the plot at a brisk pace offering many twists and turns. Jackdaws is in contrast to another recent novel by Follett, Hornet Flight, which seems to have a more deliberate pace and more character development.

The characters in Jackdaws are intriguing, with Flick and her husband in the resistance who might be cheating on her and the American officer Paul Chancellor who falls in love with her. Dieter Frank also has a French mistress who he saved from the concentration camp and therefore is ultmately devoted to him. The team Flick brings with her to Germany is an interesting group with an aristocrat, a criminal, a lesbian and a transvestite. The team members get the least attention by Follett, in spite of their interesting backgrounds.

I've read many Follett novels, and all of them have been great, except for the Third Twin. Follett is a master at putting you in the time period he writes about. It'll be interesting to see how his next novel "WhiteOut" I believe, fares since it is set in the present day.

Ken Follett's "Jackdaws" is a decent WW2 action tale, a subject he is obviously enamored with. The time is late May 1944, days prior to the Allied invasion at Normandy. Headquartered in a chateau in Sainte-Cecile near the French cathedral city of Reims was the hub of a vast telecommuncations network funneling radio and telephone messages through occupied France to the Fatherland. Crippling this network would provide a huge advantage to the invading Allied forces. The French Resistance had been unsuccessful in an attempt to sabotage the chateau, resulting in the death or capture of almost the entire Bollinger Resistance group. The group was led by ex professor Michel Clairet. His wife, Felicity, known as Flick was also among the group. Flick Clairet was a British major in the SOE (Special Operations Executive), acting as an undercover liason between the English and the French Resistance. Flick was well schooled in weaponry, espionage, French culture and was fluent in French.
Luckily escaping a Gestapo dragnet after the failure at Saint-Cecile, Flick made her way back to England. While there a plan was formulated by the SOE to have Flick lead an all female team back into France to again try to destroy the communication center at Saint Cecile. Five French speaking English women were recruited to parachute into France and pose as a cleaning crew that serviced the chateau on a daily basis. Included in the group which was code named Jackdaws was a demolitions expert and a telephone engineer.
The biggest obstacle facing the team was German major Dieter Franck, a wily, calculating intelligence officer with expertise in interrogation and torture. His suspicions were heightened after the aborted attempt on the chateau. Franck using every resource at his disposal was obsessed in capturing Flick and her minions and protecting Saint-Cecile.
The story goes back and forth between Flick and Franck chronicling their trials and tribulations as they both move to fulfill the objectives of their repective missions.

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.

One of the earliest books in this genre that I read was the, "Eye Of The Needle". The author has since ranged widely amongst a variety of subjects, however with, "Jackdaws", Mr. Follett returns to World War II just prior to the Invasion Of Normandy. And like his previous efforts with this historical setting it is very well done, and will bring fond memories to those readers who were waiting for him to turn his pen once again to this theme.
The book is a substantial work offering readers well over 400 pages of taught writing that unfolds over a little more than a week prior to D-Day. Like all books of this event it contains heroes, however they play against the background here, as a heroine takes charge of the story as well as the events in the book. The book begins with a notation that states that 50 women worked as secret agents in France for The Special Executive during the war. The book never seems to reach the moniker of historical fiction, although comments at the end strongly insinuate there was a real woman who, at the very least provided the inspiration for the heroine, "Flick". The women who volunteered to serve behind enemy lines in occupied France, and repeatedly traveled back and forth across The Channel during the war were clearly remarkable women, and were as fearless as any of their male counterparts.
This novel is a bit scattered in its tone. The changes in the mood of the book work well as a whole, however they can seem a bit jarring and out of place as the book is read. If very graphic descriptions of the most brutal interrogation of both men and women are an issue, several areas of this book will be troublesome to read. I don't feel the length to which Mr. Follett took the level of detail was necessary, he is a wonderful writer, and many of these dungeon settings with their attendant horrors struck me as gratuitous. The main event of the book will either work well for a reader, or will be dismissed as being far too improbable. Mr. Follett increases the likelihood of the latter response as the team that is selected is from a practical standpoint untrained but for Flick, and their conduct is so outrageous it tests the reader's ability to suspend disbelief. There are always amazing true stories conducted by a group that should have a near zero chance of prevailing, however Mr. Follett takes the group a step further by making them all fairly dysfunctional as individuals. This is a bit like the stories of a group of jailed soldiers being granted a chance at redemption. The difference is they are at least soldiers, again with the exception of Flick, the group ranges as far as a member who can be likened to Julie Andrews in Victor Victoria, albeit reversed.
As odd as it may sound in conclusion I did very much enjoy the book. The only rationale I can offer is that the Heroine Flick was a wonderful character, beautifully written, and as competent as any Special Forces Operative. So while there may be bits that will make a reader wince with incredulity, read on. This is very much a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I've just read my local library's copy of this book, it's not bad. I found the plot to be more or less believeable and generally well developed as were most of the characters. I do not think it is completely ridiculous to tell of a last minute sabotage attempt such as described in the story using virtually untrained women, that sort of thing does happen in so many things in real life. Follett writes of a desperate search for women who could do the mission and having to take what comes along, and the bureaucratic interference encountered when someone favored is rejected, that and the incompetence of some of the Nazi's is so true to life. The behavior of the women agents isn't exactly what you usually see in a war story but does sound like what I'd expect someone so untrained to do ( the two lesbians getting themselves captured by going out to dinner is an example)I did like the way Flick and Ruby handled themselves. FLick's new love, Paul, seemed kind of thrown in to me, I would've liked more development there. Greta, the German transevestite homosexual (actually named Gerhard) was sure a new one for a war story although he/she did work out pretty well. I could have done without the little bits of sex, they didn't really add to the story. My biggest complaint is with Mr. Follettt's writing style because every page is full of sentences like "He did this" or some other sort of fragments which really should have been cleaned up some.

Ken Follett, once again, finely blends history with fiction, in his latest WWII thriller, a story of 6 female undercover agents ( although one isn't all what she appears to be ) who attempt to crush the Nazi communication network in Europe literally days, and even hours, prior to D-Day. "Jacdaws" is based upon the true story of Pearl Witherington, who was one of the 50 female spies used in the second world war. Her fictional counterpart is Felicity "Flick" Clariet, who works with the French underground.
The first half of the book is really two stories told simultaneously. The first is the story of how Flick recruits and trains her team to go into Nazi occupied France to destroy a chateau serving as the center of all German communciations after a failed mission, which opens the story, was unsuccessful in doing so. The second story of the first half involves Dieter Franck, interrogator and torturer par excellence and how he plans to break the back of the Resistance. The sections with Flick and the recruitment of her team are somewhat shallow. Her recruits are somewhat unbelievable at first. When they are finally inducted into the armed services, Flick says to them ( and I swear this is the line from the book ) "You're in the army. Now drink your cocoa and go to bed." Dieter Franck comes across as much more of a deeper character. An aide to Rommel of Desert Fox fame, he is drawn very well by Follet and, as a result, it appears a tad unbelievable that he would be outwitted by conicidence and blind luck when tracking Flick. In the second half, when the two stories merge, the action and plot flows much better.
Still, Follett lets the gals be the heroes, as he should. Paul Chancellor and the boys from SOE and MI6 are all secondary. I'm not giving anything away by saying that the Normandy Invasion comes off without a hitch and it's no secret that we win WWII. Though "Jacdaws" is not as riveting as "Eye of the Needle" nor as in depth as "Pillars of the Earth", it is a good beach read. Also, a movie starring, maybe, Angelina Jolie, is certainly sure to follow.

I enjoyed this story. The plot was full of conflict and bite-your-nails tension, with death always imminent. In addition, Follett based his story on the true-life incident of British women who acted as spies in France during World War II. In fact, the woman he most likely based the story on died not too many years after the novel was published, and her obituary mentioned that she was the model for the main character in Jackdaws. All the characters were interesting, willing to sacrifice in order to defeat the Nazis. I found this story more visual than many of Follett's novels: I can still, years later, see the night-time landing in the field. And I thought the plot was good up until the end, where Follett went for a smash-bang finish that was certainly spectacular, but not necessarily the best ending. Definitely worth reading.

Ken Follett has been doing this sort of thing for years. His best work, other than perhaps the atypical historical novel The Pillars of the Earth, has been set in World War II, with Nazi and Allied spies chasing one another across the battlefields and occupied countries of the war. This latest entry starts with a shootout between French partisans, led by a British agent, and Germans at a communications center in occupied Normandy. The action takes place on the eve of D-Day, and the attack fails. The leader, however, is a determined woman named Felicity (Flick) Clairet, and she's one stubborn lady. She decides to try again, more subtly.
The action of the book follows Flick through her return to England, recruiting a very different team of irregular operatives to perform the mission, and their subesequent adventures in France. It alternates between this and the activities of a Nazi intelligence officer, a former policeman named Dieter Franck. Dieter is determined to stop the invasion and catch Flick, who he thinks can lead him to various resistance leaders in France.
The problem with the book, such as it is, is a strange one. The author seems unclear as to whether the Nazis are evil or not, as a group. Franck definitely isn't motivated by any animus towards Jews or anything, he merely wishes to protect Germany from invaders, and is willing to do things like torture people in order to achieve his goal. He has a beautiful French Jew for a girlfriend, and throws himself on her to shield her body when there's shooting, so you know he's attached to her. This creates a strange atmosphere for the novel: there's a sort of moral equivalence that's a bit distasteful. My wife tried the audio of this some time ago, and tells me that she had trouble caring about any of the characters, and stopped listening to the story before she finished it.
With that one (big) misgiving aside, this is a good book, and very well written. It's definitely worth the effort.

The story of this book is amazing, even if the story is true, it has parts that was invented by the writer, it has to many coincidences that definitely can't be real, but this parts make you keep reading all the time and wondering what will be on the next page.
The way that all the bad guys died is like an american movie, the worst they did in life, the worst they died, but that is part of the novel, you will never know if this part (the dead of the bad guys) is true.
There were two things that I didn't like, and of course you will never know if was true or not:
1) The husband of Felicity tells her that he love her and he will never had another affair, and at the first opportunity he decides to "save" his girlfriend and put in danger his wife's life, I said "save" because he knew (when you read the book you will understand) that his girlfriend and he will be dead after Dieter find his wife.
2) This point is why I put just 4 stars to this book, WHY? when a writer has an excellent book, an excellent thriller, an excellent everything, has to write the last chapter that does not has to do anything with the rest of book and that takes the smile from your face when you finish the book?

I found this book to be a fast paced page turner that was as intriguing as it was exciting.

The book opens with a failed attempt at gaining control of a Nazi communications bunker in France by a group of resistance fighters. Some of the group is killed, but the heart of the group manages to escape with their lives. Felicity, the main character, must go back to England to regroup, leaving her husband, Michael, in France to fend for himself.

Felicity works with the British government to put together a rag-tag group of women who will take the bunker, therefore, severing an arm of Nazi communication. All the while, the Nazi's are actively hunting for the leaders of the resistance group to snuff out the next attempt.

This novel is full of action, espionage, excitement sprinkled with a little bit of sex.

Okay, so Ken Follett's "Jackdaws"borrows its basic plot concept from "The Dirty Dozen - a motley group of saboteurs is hastily assembled and trained for a perilous mission behind German lines in France in the few days before the D-Day invasion. Their objective, to destroy a vital Nazi communication center. If the target can be eliminated, the German's ability to coordinate a military response to the massive invasion will be fatally impaired, thereby assuring its success. The novel opens with an ill-fated attempt, doomed by faulty intelligence, against the installation by combined French resistance forces and their British commandos. Most of the rebels are killed, and the few that survive are brutally tortured by the Gestapo into divulging secrets that the Nazis hope will break the back of the insurgents. Among the survivors are the novel's heroine, Felicity Flick, a major in the British commando forces, and her husband Michel, leader of the French resistance cell. Leaving her wounded husband behind with a young woman from the resistance (whom Flick soon discovers her husband has been having an affair with), she returns to England, and quickly concocts a desperate scheme to have another go at destroying the communications center. She will quickly recruit and train five women who, after being air-dropped into France, will pose as cleaning women in order to gain access to, and sabotage the targeted chateau. Their code-name:Jackdaws. From this premise follows a taut,engrossing page-turner as anabsorbing game of cat-and-mouse plays out between Flick's group and her nemesis, Dieter Franck, special adjutant to Gen. Rommel, entrusted with the task of thwarting and eliminating the resistance fighters' efforts to stymie the Nazi's invasion response. To Follett's credit, he is for the most part successful in giving his characters human dimension where lesser writers would have been satisfied to present us with stock-and stick characters.The Nazi Franck is reasonably humane and not totally unsympathetic, while our heroine Flick, while courageous and admirable is often willful, peremptory and downright cold-blooded. In addition, along with desperately striving to stay one step ahead of her adversary's wiliness, Flick must contend with her group's vagaries and quirks: one is a transvestite, a second is a lesbian who is involved with a third, and yet a fourth is a pampered aristocrat who endangers the group with her inability to keep a secret. Flick herself must cope with the fact that she no longer loves her faithless husband and is falling for an American officer who is helping coordinate the operation. Follett, for most of the novel's length maintains a high level of reader suspense and keeps us turning those pages. Unfortunately, what keeps "Jackdaws" from being a total success is that toward the end, he descends into predictable action cliches, and many of the principals are transformed from the flesh and blood characters they had been heretofore, into cartoonish caricatures -most notably Flick's resemblance to Sigourney Weaver's Rambolina Ripley of the "Aliens" films. Nonetheless, "Jackdaws" is for the most part, an engrossing, suspenseful. and exciting read, more than well-worth the time.

After participating in one failed operation, Major Felicite Clairet of the Special Operations Executive returns to France to blow up a heavily-guarded telephone exchange just before the allied invasion in June, 1944. The team she leads will impersonate a crew of cleaning ladies in order to gain access to the building.
It is possible to view the story as being about a duel between the strong-willed Felicity and a cruel, fanatical German Army officer named Major Dieter Franck. Even though we know the British wonder woman will probably defeat the German superman, there is still enough suspense to keep us interested until the outcome is certain.
Follett is a trained journalist who is an excellent writer. He is also a skilled storyteller and he seems to be at his best when spinning yarns about World War II.
The book was supposedly inspired by the example of Pearl Witherington, a British courier who was recommended for a Military Cross for her wartime exploits.

Ken Follett’s latest novel â€~Jackdaws’(I love this title)turns to WW2 and a little known organization that goes by the acronym SOE.
It’s the week before D-Day. 28-year-old Felicity â€~Flick’ Clairet, an agent for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which specializes in sabotage behind enemy lines, is in charge of destroying an important telephone exchange station in France. After the first mission fails she returns to London to look for recruits for a brave new plan that will take them into the exchange itself. These recruits will be comprised of nothing but females (and quite a group this turns out to be).
Dieter Franck is the German, working under Rommel, who is set out to stop the resistance movement. He soon becomes Flick’s archenemy. Dieter is a skilled interrogator and a ruthless torturer who has a knack of getting the truth out of his enemies.
The cat and mouse scenario between Flick and Dieter drives this novel to its very satisfying conclusion. It has an odd assortment of characters, some you’ll like and some you’ll hate. This is not one of Follett’s more memorable novels but it is still worth your time if you’re a fan. The plot didn’t really draw me in until the second half of the book, and that’s when it grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go. I will continue to be a Follett fan.
Recommended.

Jackdaws is clearly the best of Follet's recent books. The story is set in the UK and France during the period just prior to D-Day in WWII. The Germans are in the middle of preparations for the massive Allied invasion that they know is inevitable. The French resistance, supported by the Allies, is doing what it can to be disruptive in advance of the attack. In the middle of it all is a group of British secret agents who are tasked with destroying a key communications exchange in northern France. When the first plot is foiled, a more desperate plan based on an all-female attack team is launched. Jackdaws is an impressive tale of espionage, with intense physical, emotional and intellectual battle being done among the combatants. It is full of intrigue, twists, turns and surprises that are classic Follet. The reader is presented with interesting characters and an entertaining, fast-paced story. Jackdaws will be difficult to put down once you get started.

and succeeds. Follett recaptures the spirit and willingness to take risks of the British, American, and French Resistance spies and soldiers during WWII. In Flick, a female British spy, we find a careful woman who courts danger. Married to Michel, of the French Resistance, Flick has been drawn into espionage by her love, but is practical enough to realize that Michel has feet of clay in the relationship department.
Follett's story tells of Flick's determination to lead a female group of spies on a critical mission in the days before the invasion. They must take out a critical German post, and Flick is forced to use amateurs on her most important mission. Follett
builds the suspense to its most critical in telling the tale, and does not spare romance or sadness in its conclusion.
Although Follett is fairly predictable in his writing, and his telling is straight-forward, without many interesting sidelines, the story is enjoyable and well told.

D-Day is fast approaching, but the German army is too strong, too well coordinated, to assure success. And if the allied invasion failed, France and continental Europe will remain under Nazi control for years. A French resistance group, led by beautiful British spy Felicity (Flick) Clairet, is assigned a critical telecommunications center as a target but run into deadly resistance. Flick decides to go back, accompanied by an all-woman group who can pose as cleaners--but she doesn't count on the German counter-espionage expert, Major Dieter Franck, who picked up the pieces of her failed raid and sees her capture as a way of rolling up much of the French Resistance.
Much of the local support that Flick has counted on is already compromised by Dieter but she has no choice but to continue. D-Day has to be close--days or hours away, and failure by either side may literally mean the difference between winning and losing the war.
The war between Britain and Germany takes on a more personal tone as Dieter and Flick try to leapfrog the other, their motivations escalating from professional to highly personal over the course of the novel. Author Ken Follett does a wonderful job making Dieter somewhat sympathetic despite the Nazi regime he supports and the methods he uses to wring the truth from his captives. In the post-September 11 period, Dieter's identification of the French Resistance as terrorists adds impact to the story in a way that Follett probably did not expect.
Follett's story-telling is so smooth that JACKDAWS becomes almost experienced, like a movie, rather than a set of words on paper. I couldn't tell you much about Follett's style--I was too involved in the story.

This is a remarkable book. It begins with the assertion" Exactly fifty women were sent into France as secret agents by the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. Of those, thirty-six survived the war. The other fourteen gave their lives. This book is dedicated to all of them."
b
Follett starts with those facts and then builds a story around the best of the women agents being assigned the job of blowing up the most important telephone exchange connecting the German military between France and Germany and doing it during the week preceding the invasion at Normandy. Follett communicates the sense that destroying this exchange will make the German response to invasion much slower and thus save lives and increase the chance that the greatest risk of the Second World War, the Normandy invasion, would succeed. He then creates a German intelligence officer who is determined to roll up the resistance before the invasion can occur.
The contest between allies and Nazis builds to a level of tension that is palpable. The risks people took to defeat Nazi Germany and secure safety were stunning. The notion of people dropping into France again and again on secret missions with their lives at risk every minute comes through in this book with a force that grips the reader. The sense of Nazi brutality and ruthlessness is captured in a very realistic sense of what Nazi occupied France was like.
Anyone who doubts that evil can exist and that decent people have to risk everything to defeat evil will have their doubts erased by this novel. Follett has done it again.

Ken Follet seems to know exactly how to write a plot, develop it, and insert characters that are true-to-life.

I had picked this book out as a seemingly interesting read for a school project. I had no idea that I would be immersed in the world of German-occupied France.
The characters are truly life-like in is novel. Flick is such a cunning, intelligent woman. The amount of deception in this novel is quite a bit, but it pulled off in such an incredible way. It was even more immersive due to the fact that we are given the viewpoint of multiple people throughout the story. I found myself in awe when I realized the true intentions of some of the characters. Even I was deceived by them.
Truly incredible.

I'm definitely going to pick up another novel by Ken Follett.

I have enjoyed many of Ken Follett's books--spy thrillers and others. I really enjoyed reading about a competent women as the main character for a change.

It's based on the French Resistance in 1944 days before the Allied invasion. "Flick" has been part of the resistance for 2 years and goes back for one final critical mission. What makes this different is she goes in with a bunch of misfits. The book also follows the story from a Nazi officer's side as he tries to track her down. The Nazi officer's part of the story is interesting because it offers up the other side perspective. The most disturbing part of the book, however, is the unflinching look at how he extracts information from these spies. Torture details, although pretty brief, are fairly graphic and probably could be skipped if one found it too much without losing much of the story.

The story was inspired by the true story of 50 women who were spies that were sent into France. This story, of course, is all fictional.

The book was a fast read. With the Nazi officer always at Flick's heels, Follett kept the tension at a high level. I would recommend this book.

...because you won't want to put it down until you are done. Follett's Jackdaws is an exciting read from the first page to the last. Sure, some of it may be implausible, but it's a thrilling ride. Follett builds suspense by trading viewpoints between the Nazi, Dieter, in charge of finding the British spies in France; and with Flick, the lovely British spy who has led numerous groups of French resistance for years. Flick's challenge is enormous: in a day she needs to find a team of women in Britain who can speak French fluently, and possess the qualities she needs to blow up a telephone exchange. It's almost like "The Dirty Dozen" but with a female cast. Dieter is one of the greatest villains I've ever read about, unfortunately his atrocities are based in fact. Dieter pulls out all the stops to capture Flick and her group of spies. If you like WW2 stories and espionage thrillers, don't miss this one.

I picked up a copy of this book at a library sale. I had never heard of it, but I was a longtime fan of "The Eye of the Needle" and "The Key to Rebecca." For years, I had purchased novels by Alan Furst, because he is supposed to do WWII spy novels so well, but this novel by Follett is so good with character, situation, and suspense, he makes Furst look like an amateur by comparison. So many small items of daily life in Occupied France are blended into the narrative. I recommend this novel to anyone who enjoyed Follett's earlier WWII novels and has not been so pleased with the very ambitious trilogy he is currently publishing, bit by bit.

Jackdaws is the stoy a young female British secret agent in WW11 called Flick, who parachutes into France with a team of five female agents in order to carry out a daring raid on a Nazi communictions centre. I have to admit to being a big fan of books about 'The Special Operations Executive (SOE) who were the main players in WW11 to carry out this type of mission and Ken Follett as usual proves to be an expert in historic detail. However, this is not just a book for (SOE) fans this is a book for anyone who enjoys a fast paced action adventure novel that is packed with excitment right up to the last page. I have no trouble giving this book 5 stars.

Ken Follett provides a fast paced thriller. If you are looking for a detailed novel or something with meat do not pick up this book! Ever! If you are looking for a fun, quick and enjoyable read by all means give this one a try. It is unlike "Pillars" and "World" so if you are expecting something along those lines you will be disappointed. It certainly pays tribute to those women who stood shoulder to shoulder with our soldiers in the field demonstrating the same courage and single minded purpose it took to defeat the enemy.

I can't get enough of Ken Follett. Pillars of the Earth is my favorite book of all time but he never disappoints. He is so smart and his books are all so different but what I like most is his writing style. He's easy to read and at the end of Jackdaws I became a speed reader swept away by the excitement. He created some very strong female characters in this book and I love that. So often women are portrayed as weak and hysterical but not these gals! They kicked butt. Kudos Mr. Follett. I enjoyed it so much I jumped right into another Ken Follett book, Night Over Water, and I'm loving it too.

I really enjoyed this book for a number of reasons. First off, i like reading or watching about anything that's about WWII and brings you up close with the horrors of war. The story is about a woman who's a British spy and is planning to blow up a telecommunications center that the Nazi's are using in occupied France. It's only days away from D-Day, before the Allies storm the beaches, and both the Nazi's and the British are scrambling to break the others' back. One Nazi in particular is a professional interrogator and torturer who's tasked with destroying the French Resistance. He's brutal and thinks only of the mission and disregards the means, but still, Follett does a great job of showing how even the most merciless Nazi's can simultaneously be rational and loving men. It gives you a really great insight into how the Nazi ideology didn't stop people from being both loving people and monsters. The British Agent is tasked with putting together a team of women to destroy the Nazi's comms so the Allies will be in better shape to intercept messages by the Nazis and hence make their invasion go smoother. Only her team is a bunch of misfits who have no idea what to do.
This isn't a very emotional book, in that you won't get too angry or too sad or too happy, instead it's a good mix of love and hate and victory and terrible loss, and therefore makes for a worthy read. Highly recommend it.

I actually ended up liking this audiobook. Never having been a great fan of Follett's work, Pillars of the Earth being an exception, I actually found myself getting into the story. By no means is this great literature, but if you accept it for the excapist fun that it is, you can really get into the story of women spies during World War II. I really liked the character of Flick; although, at times she could be a little over the top. Some of Follett's historical accuracy was questionable, but this is "fiction," so I didn't worry about it too much. As for the narrator, Kate Reading is excellent. I've listened to several books narrated by Ms. Reading, Anne Rice's Pandora being one of the better, and she never disappoints. This bit of escapist fun is great listening for workouts.

This is a remarkable book. It begins with the assertion" Exactly fifty women were sent into France as secret agents by the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. Of those, thirty-six survived the war. The other fourteen gave their lives. This book is dedicated to all of them."
b
Follett starts with those facts and then builds a story around the best of the women agents being assigned the job of blowing up the most important telephone exchange connecting the German military between France and Germany and doing it during the week preceding the invasion at Normandy. Follett communicates the sense that destroying this exchange will make the German response to invasion much slower and thus save lives and increase the chance that the greatest risk of the Second World War, the Normandy invasion, would succeed. He then creates a German intelligence officer who is determined to roll up the resistance before the invasion can occur.
The contest between allies and Nazis builds to a level of tension that is palpable. The risks people took to defeat Nazi Germany and secure safety were stunning. The notion of people dropping into France again and again on secret missions with their lives at risk every minute comes through in this book with a force that grips the reader. The sense of Nazi brutality and ruthlessness is captured in a very realistic sense of what Nazi occupied France was like.
Anyone who doubts that evil can exist and that decent people have to risk everything to defeat evil will have their doubts erased by this novel. Follett has done it again.

Ken Follet seems to know exactly how to write a plot, develop it, and insert characters that are true-to-life.

I had picked this book out as a seemingly interesting read for a school project. I had no idea that I would be immersed in the world of German-occupied France.
The characters are truly life-like in is novel. Flick is such a cunning, intelligent woman. The amount of deception in this novel is quite a bit, but it pulled off in such an incredible way. It was even more immersive due to the fact that we are given the viewpoint of multiple people throughout the story. I found myself in awe when I realized the true intentions of some of the characters. Even I was deceived by them.
Truly incredible.

I'm definitely going to pick up another novel by Ken Follett.

I have enjoyed many of Ken Follett's books--spy thrillers and others. I really enjoyed reading about a competent women as the main character for a change.

It's based on the French Resistance in 1944 days before the Allied invasion. "Flick" has been part of the resistance for 2 years and goes back for one final critical mission. What makes this different is she goes in with a bunch of misfits. The book also follows the story from a Nazi officer's side as he tries to track her down. The Nazi officer's part of the story is interesting because it offers up the other side perspective. The most disturbing part of the book, however, is the unflinching look at how he extracts information from these spies. Torture details, although pretty brief, are fairly graphic and probably could be skipped if one found it too much without losing much of the story.

The story was inspired by the true story of 50 women who were spies that were sent into France. This story, of course, is all fictional.

The book was a fast read. With the Nazi officer always at Flick's heels, Follett kept the tension at a high level. I would recommend this book.

...because you won't want to put it down until you are done. Follett's Jackdaws is an exciting read from the first page to the last. Sure, some of it may be implausible, but it's a thrilling ride. Follett builds suspense by trading viewpoints between the Nazi, Dieter, in charge of finding the British spies in France; and with Flick, the lovely British spy who has led numerous groups of French resistance for years. Flick's challenge is enormous: in a day she needs to find a team of women in Britain who can speak French fluently, and possess the qualities she needs to blow up a telephone exchange. It's almost like "The Dirty Dozen" but with a female cast. Dieter is one of the greatest villains I've ever read about, unfortunately his atrocities are based in fact. Dieter pulls out all the stops to capture Flick and her group of spies. If you like WW2 stories and espionage thrillers, don't miss this one.

I picked up a copy of this book at a library sale. I had never heard of it, but I was a longtime fan of "The Eye of the Needle" and "The Key to Rebecca." For years, I had purchased novels by Alan Furst, because he is supposed to do WWII spy novels so well, but this novel by Follett is so good with character, situation, and suspense, he makes Furst look like an amateur by comparison. So many small items of daily life in Occupied France are blended into the narrative. I recommend this novel to anyone who enjoyed Follett's earlier WWII novels and has not been so pleased with the very ambitious trilogy he is currently publishing, bit by bit.

Jackdaws is the stoy a young female British secret agent in WW11 called Flick, who parachutes into France with a team of five female agents in order to carry out a daring raid on a Nazi communictions centre. I have to admit to being a big fan of books about 'The Special Operations Executive (SOE) who were the main players in WW11 to carry out this type of mission and Ken Follett as usual proves to be an expert in historic detail. However, this is not just a book for (SOE) fans this is a book for anyone who enjoys a fast paced action adventure novel that is packed with excitment right up to the last page. I have no trouble giving this book 5 stars.

Ken Follett provides a fast paced thriller. If you are looking for a detailed novel or something with meat do not pick up this book! Ever! If you are looking for a fun, quick and enjoyable read by all means give this one a try. It is unlike "Pillars" and "World" so if you are expecting something along those lines you will be disappointed. It certainly pays tribute to those women who stood shoulder to shoulder with our soldiers in the field demonstrating the same courage and single minded purpose it took to defeat the enemy.

I can't get enough of Ken Follett. Pillars of the Earth is my favorite book of all time but he never disappoints. He is so smart and his books are all so different but what I like most is his writing style. He's easy to read and at the end of Jackdaws I became a speed reader swept away by the excitement. He created some very strong female characters in this book and I love that. So often women are portrayed as weak and hysterical but not these gals! They kicked butt. Kudos Mr. Follett. I enjoyed it so much I jumped right into another Ken Follett book, Night Over Water, and I'm loving it too.

I really enjoyed this book for a number of reasons. First off, i like reading or watching about anything that's about WWII and brings you up close with the horrors of war. The story is about a woman who's a British spy and is planning to blow up a telecommunications center that the Nazi's are using in occupied France. It's only days away from D-Day, before the Allies storm the beaches, and both the Nazi's and the British are scrambling to break the others' back. One Nazi in particular is a professional interrogator and torturer who's tasked with destroying the French Resistance. He's brutal and thinks only of the mission and disregards the means, but still, Follett does a great job of showing how even the most merciless Nazi's can simultaneously be rational and loving men. It gives you a really great insight into how the Nazi ideology didn't stop people from being both loving people and monsters. The British Agent is tasked with putting together a team of women to destroy the Nazi's comms so the Allies will be in better shape to intercept messages by the Nazis and hence make their invasion go smoother. Only her team is a bunch of misfits who have no idea what to do.
This isn't a very emotional book, in that you won't get too angry or too sad or too happy, instead it's a good mix of love and hate and victory and terrible loss, and therefore makes for a worthy read. Highly recommend it.

I actually ended up liking this audiobook. Never having been a great fan of Follett's work, Pillars of the Earth being an exception, I actually found myself getting into the story. By no means is this great literature, but if you accept it for the excapist fun that it is, you can really get into the story of women spies during World War II. I really liked the character of Flick; although, at times she could be a little over the top. Some of Follett's historical accuracy was questionable, but this is "fiction," so I didn't worry about it too much. As for the narrator, Kate Reading is excellent. I've listened to several books narrated by Ms. Reading, Anne Rice's Pandora being one of the better, and she never disappoints. This bit of escapist fun is great listening for workouts.

Reading Ken Follett's 'Jackdaws' is like riding a wild roller coaster with unexpected turns, dips and twists. Felicity Clairet, otherwise know as Flick, leads a rookie team of female agents into Nazi-occupied France just before D-Day to blow-up a critical target. Her advesary in a relentless game of can & mouse is Major Dieter Franck, a clever and cruel army detective. Over a 10 day period the reader ducks, winces and twitches through intense suspense.
Major Franck is a gem - a sadistic interrogator with an occasional conscience. His chapters are so intriguing, they tip the balance of reader interest early in the book. However, when the Jackdaw team reaches France, Flick draws even with the major and novel accellerates.
Like all great roller coasters, you don't want it to end. 'Jackdaws' is a true thrill ride. Buckle your seat belts and enjoy.

I hate to admit it but prior to May 2009, I was not aware of Ken Follett. I had heard of the book, 'Eye of the Needle' but had not read it or seen the movie. In May 2009, we were on board our yacht, 'Sunboy' and were berthed at the Cowes Yacht Club on the Isle of Wight in England. There is a wonderful second hand book shop in Cowes, simply called 'That Shop' We were preparing our yacht to set sail for who knows where. To help entertain ourselves on our journey, we bought boxes and boxes of second hand novels. Along the way, we would randomly pick out a book and start reading. Jackdaws was once of the first I read on our trip. I was saddened. Saddened that I had not discovered this author before. Jackdaws is a gripping yarn that I struggled to control the speed at which I wanted to turn the pages. The ability of the author to create his characters, allowing you to identify them and with them is brilliant. The scenes he paints with words are like watching them on a big screen right there in front of you, they are so lifelike, almost in 3D. I recall actually sitting there at times and holding my breath due to the tension he builds. A quest started. A quest lasting all through our journey, sailing 16,000 nautical miles back to Australia - Find Ken Follett's books. Searching every second hand bookstore, fellow yachties book collections, island book swaps, remote yacht clubhouses, anywhere we thought there could be a slight chance of finding one. Finding a Ken Follett book we had not read was a cause for great celebration. Everyone on board had fallen in love with the writing of this author. Such a wondrous way to pass the time sailing across the oceans, perched up in the cockpit or snuggled up in your bunk, a Ken Follett book on your lap and a steaming hot cuppa in your hands. I could apply this review to all of his books. I need the time to do other things though; as I reach for my latest addition to my collection, Winter of the World.

There are several reviews that have rated this book lower based on a comparison with Eye of the Needle. That's a disservice. Eye of the Needle is an edge of your seat, once-in-a-lifetime nail-biting thriller. Would I read Jack Daws immediately after Eye of the Needle? Never. But read in on it's own merit, and it's a five star great book.

I like Ken Follett, and this is no exception. The characters are interesting, the story believable, and there are enough twists to make this whole story an enjoyable read.

In this book, Follett's villain was a likeable character. In other books, Follett's portrayal of the villain caused the reader to dislike him. But in this one, Franck was a likeable villain, and the reader almost cheers for him, especially with his clashes with the Gestapo.

If I was forced to criticize the book, it would be regarding the ending. Of course we know that the good guys win before even starting, but the sabatoge story and the subsequent stories (details omitted so as not to ruin the story), went too fast, and without many things going wrong for the Jackdaw team.

But I enjoyed it. It was an entertaining read.

This was thee first book I read about female spies and it was great! If anyone wanted an argument for women in combat, this is it. These women were in very dangerous positions.
For another good book sort of on the subject. do not miss Shining Through by Susan Isaacs. Terrible movie, GREAT book.

I go back to The Key to Rebecca and The Eye of the Needle with this author. He is at the same level with this story of WW 2. Some may see the story as trying to curry favor with the feminists among us who believe they could be running everything if only we could reverse some historical pronouns. Actually, the ladies that attempted to sabotage the Nazi phone system in France, just before D Day had help from within their numbers by a male from within and without their numbers. This is really a well told story of the life of the times by an author who does his research and presents as compelling a story as he has ever written I could recount the outline of the story, but others here have done it well. My report is that Ken Follett is at the top of his game with this offering and that is well worth the purchase of this book. You will savor it!

Ken Follett is an extremely talented writer. His ability to move from epic historical novels to heart pounding adventure stories is amazing. This certainly falls into the latter category and delivers on all counts. He handles multiple perspective very well, seamlessly moving between the protagonist and antagonist without a hitch.

The story centers around Flick, a female British intelligence agent tasked with the destruction of a strategically important telephone exchange in occupied France, and proceeds in a hunter/hunted WWII spy thriller vein. Flick is countered by Dieter, a German intelligence officer intrigued by her and obsessed with capturing her alive. Interpersonal relationships abound and there is no lack of character depth. The resolution is somewhat predictable but no less satisfying for that fact. Follett keeps up the action until the very last second, blending sadness, anger, happiness and vengeance in equal parts.

I rate it right up there with "Eye of the Needle".

Note: May not be suitable for younger readers due to a couple of brief scenes involving sexual torture (they are Nazis, after all).

While his last several books were mediocre at best, Follett returns to classic form with Jackdaws. Though not as good as Eye Of The Needle or The Key To Rebecca, Jackdaws is Follett's best book in many years. The tension constantly builds and the action is non-stop. For pure suspense-reading, Jackdaws will have you biting your nails and on the edge of your seat. However, Jackdaws falls short of deserving a 5-star rating from me because, with the exception of Flick and Dieter Franck, many of his characters served as "tools" to tell this action-packed WWII thriller and were not developed well enough to truly care (one way or the other) about. While I thought this criticism would be important for you to know, I would highly recommend Jackdaws if you're in the mood for a novel of suspense set in the most dangerous days of WWII.

I initially borrowed this book from a friend, and once I started, I couldn't put it down, and almost couldn't bring myself to return it! Follett is an expert at painting fully developed portraits of his characters; his protagonist and supporting ladies are as varied and entertaining as they are complex. And his villain is the rare sort whom you find yourself loathing, liking, and pitying all at once. This novel -- based on a true story -- is an insightful and humbling look inside the desperate and necessary heroism of women in the Second World War -- a branch of heroism that too often is overlooked in our history books. As a history buff, as well as a fan of great World War II (semi-)fiction, I highly recommend this book. What a wonderful -- and sometimes painful -- view behind the lines at those willing to pay the ultimate price to bring down the evil Third Reich.

Despite the fact that I was seriously ill I simply had to stay up to the wee hours to finish this brilliant book. This is the third Ken Follett book I have read and it has simply got to be the best book I have ever read in my life.
The first two chapters look like most any WWII espionage novel but the plot quickly begins to thicken and then boil over with some simply marvellous and colorful characters who are a group of female [Kelly's Heroes-esque] misfits which brings together some quite comical moments blended in with the more sombre aspects of war-torn Europe.
The group is led by Felicity "Flick" Clairet who plays a deadly game of Cat and Mouse with the Nazi torturer Major Dieter Frank in German-occupied France. The group's objective is to blow-up a telephone exchange in a French town in anticipation of the allied landings for D-Day.
This book will definitely keep you reading. It is a little predicatable in places but then I struggle to find any title I couldn't tar with that same brush.
This IS certainly an entertaining read and I personally can't wait for a Jackdaws movie? How about it Ken?

I recently read and enjoyed another book based during WWII with the main character being a woman in the resistance, also in France, so I got Jackdaws as well.
Flick Claret is one of the best women characters I've ever encountered. She's strong and sensative and holds her own in situations that many men would bulk at.
Like Flick, Nazi General Dieter Frank also had many sides. Reveared as a torture specialist, the reader also gets to know him as a husband, father and (adulterous) lover.
The individual women who are recruited for the Jackdaws mission are a varied group with interesting backgrounds but I thought they just added color for the main characters. I'd have liked to know more about them.
For me, this was a little slow getting started but it became a real page turner. There were several times that the crisis at hand didn't pan out the way I thought it would, which really made me want to keep reading. A few characters were pretty well developed but others who seemed to have alot of depth were left alone. Although these people were in high-risk positions during a crucial time in the war in France, they still had to deal with the up's and down's of everyday life and love. Flick didn't have time to dwell on her failing marriage or to second guess her feelings for another man. In some ways the complexity of the war and the assignment of the Jackdaws brought clarity to what otherwise may have been annogonzing personal decisions.
I'd like to know what happend to those who survived the mission. I think there's potential for a post-war Jackdaws reunion.

I waited for this book to come out in paperback because I thought the concept of a gang of female operatives in WWII would be interesting, and the single star I gave this novel is only for Follett's concept. Everything else in the book is predictable, boring or downright dumb.
I haven't read any of Follet's other novels, so I don't know if he has a habbit of creating the weak caricatures similar to those in Jackdaws or if he simply has a problem writing female chracters, but nothing about any of the characters --male or female -- rang true. At one point I had a strong image of Mr. Burns and Smithers from The Simpsons in my mind while reading about the Nazi spy-hunter and his assistant.
The romance that protagonist Flick finds herself in is downright gratuitous and unnecessary to the plot and all of the dialogue was just weak.
...

I have just read my first, but definitely not last Ken Follett novel. I received Jackdaws as a Christmas present. What a present it turned it out to be!
Jackdaws, based on a true story, needs to be made into a blockbuster movie. It tells the story of how people thrust into dire situations can do amazing things. Felicity Clairet, aka Flick, is a strong main character, operating behind enemy lines in occupied France. On her trail is Dieter Franck, Gestapo agent. What ensues is one of the best cat- and- mouse chases I personally have ever read in modern fiction.
During the entirety of the book, I kept saying to myself, This is a master at work! There were several interesting supporting characters. At times you need a card to keep track of these characters, but they are thoroughly believable and well written.
This is easily one of my all-time favorite books. Think of The Fugitive during Nazi WWII occupied France and you are getting the idea of just how impressive this novel is!

There seems to be a common thread amongst writers: WWII and love affairs. This is a quick, exciting read. Set in WWII France and England, this is a yet untold story of the roles that women played as intelligence officers during the war. A fast paced book mixed with stories of torture, love, war policy, and bravado.
The author moves you from place to place seemlessly and focusing on only a handful of characters, sets the story before you, as seen through the eyes of each: the British female spy, the German officer in chanrge of breaking the resistance, and the American in charge of the operation to break German communication on the eve of D-Day.
Enjoyed it and recommend it to all!

Man, I love Ken Follett. His wartime novels are always so good. Here, he introduces a fantastic female lead in Flick Clairet. She's interesting, flawed, courageous, and brilliant. She and her female squad named the Jackdaws set out on an impossible mission to help the Allies during WWII. The book is laced with real history and is an example of great storytelling. Overall, a great read.

As time grew closer to the middle of the 20th century, the entire world fought in an epic battle over land, humanity, morality, and freedom. Brittish and American high commands desperatly planned an all out invastion which would take place in a matter of days. The German's had superior warefare techniques, man-power, and machinery. Something needed to be done to insure a success in Allied offense. Jackdaws, an all-woman, special operative team, prepared to infultrate deep into France to cripple the German's communication capability. However, the leader, Flick, has her own personal problems which lead into lies, deceit, love, and intimacy. These things coupled create the ultimate action-adventure which twists the reader's mind. Ken Follett shows his amazing ability to bring the past into the present and to engulf the reader into the urgency of the moment. Jackdaws will definitly hold the reader's interest until the end, leaving a craving for more action.

Of 15 Ken Follett titles, I have read 15. Why? Because his stories are researched and spell-binding. I can trust the historical background he uses for the unfolding thriller. He sees history through his british spectacles, however, and the Nazis in "Jackdaws" are sadistic torturers up against one British heroine, who outwits them one by one. Even I, as being German, am satisfied when she thrusts her knife in the evil doers eye; at this point nationality doesn't matter anymore. The evil has to be stopped...and more power to the British ladies! [email protected]

Follett as the author of perfectly researched historical plots, strong, complex characters and " chess -like " intelligent fast paced action. The author has since ranged widely amongst a variety of subjects, leaving me disappointed with flatness of " Whiteout ' or " Code to zero ". However, with "Jackdaws", Follett returns to World War II. Historical setting of French resistance and France just prior to the Invasion Of Normandy it is very well done. What leaves me disappointed is flatness of the characters. Follett starts strong describing not perfect, but highly interesting and somewhat controversial women that were members of Jackdows. However, this characters, strengths and weaknesses, their talents and phobias seem to play no role in further development of the plot and in the final victory of the mission. All action and the plot is reduced to the dual between handsome, charming, brilliant and evil SS Officer - Dieter and beautiful, charming, brilliant and angelic British female....a bit old Follett plot begging for more depth and complexity.

At the beginning, I was pulled into the story of women operating from behind enemy lines during WWII. The action was brisk, the plot was driven by interesting characters, and I was looking forward to finding how it all played out.
However, something got lost in the middle of this story and I found it hard to finish.
I think the author missed a golden opportunity to tell the JACKDAWS' story. Maybe the real truth was better than a 'fictionalized' re-telling of their story.
Oh, well.

Jackdaws presents Ken Follett back in action and gives us a glimpse of the authors greatness that's been lacking for so long. I was a bit surprised when i finished this new novel from my former favorite author. I liked it very much! Thought that the man was a has-been after several not-so-good books in the 90s. But Jackdaws borders to classic Follett reminiscent of great books like Eye of the needle, Triangle, The Key to Rebecca, The Man from St Petersburg and Lie down with lions. It's suspense from page one and the whole set-up of the story reminded at least me of Eye of the needle, the battle between two strong individuals (in this case a young, beautiful british woman and a german nazi making a career) as a war is going on in the background. Two people that can change the outcome of the WW2 and the classic scenario of a spy behind enemy lines. Follett has always had strong women in his books and it's no different in Jackdaws. The suspense grows even bigger when the reader is rooting for Felicity, aka Flick, and her gang of women volunteers when they're dropped behind enemy lines in France to destroy a radio station belonging to the germans.
Jackdaws also shows that Follett is at his best when he writes books with a historical backdropping or from one of the great wars, WW1 or WW2. Almost gave up on Follett after Code zero but now I'm looking forward to his next one!

I'm going to make this review short and sweet, since there's not much to be said here. Jackdaws is the second novel of Ken Follett's that I read after Eye of the Needle, and I think it was just as good. I was hooked during every single part of the story, the characters were very distinct and original, and I felt a really strong connection with the protagonists. I knew I was reading a really good story, since I would be thinking to myself "What's going to happen to Flick Clairet?" all day during work! I've read a handful of Ken Follett's books so far, and I have a lot to go, but this one's at the top with Eye of the Needle in my opinion.

The Eye of the Needle is supposed to be Follett's greatest spy thriller, but I believe that this one is much better. The plot is more complex and less predictable, which appealed to me. Though not as engaging as Pillars of the Earth (Follett's best), it came close, while being a much easier read.
My one complaint is that Follett's characters always seem a little flat. They are almost always single dimentional and never really surprise you. This is the only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5.
Fiction couched neatly in history, Jackdaws is an excellent read that remembers the sacrifice of the French Resistance and British spies, both who helped pave the way for the D-Day forces that invaded Normandy and preserved freedom for all. Our deepest thanks go to God and those who stood against evil during that dark hour.

Once again Ken Follett has drawn us into the midst of the second world war and the resistance movement. As the Jackdaws are united, their varied habits and personalities are as captivating as the plot. Mr. Follett's supurb use of action and dialogue grabs readers and rivets them to "JackDaws" page-turning intrigue. Ken Follett's talent shines through page after page, making "Jackdaws" a must for avid readers. Beverly J Scott author of Righteous Revenge

I have been a fan of Ken Follett for about 20 years. I have read all of his books except Night Over Water(partially read), Third Twin(started it 3 times), Hammer of Eden and Hornet Flight.
I think he should stick to WWII stories.
I never got into the Third Twin...I tried three times. I know an author never wants to be "type-cast" but this era (WWII) is his. He can enthrall a reader with the characters...the attention to detail...the feeling of BEING THERE. I give credit to The Eye of The Needle for turning me into a reader first and a writer second...it had that kind of an impact on me. Now on to Jackdaws...
I enjoyed the characters immensely and the pace of the book kept you into the story. The connections between the characters were well thought out. As usual, his attention to detail was very well crafted. I only had two main gripes about the book.
The first is the predictability of the storyline. Maybe being a writer I have honed that ability to foresee events before they shape up but I saw most of the events chapters ahead of their occurances. As an example...I knew from their first encounter that Flick and Paul would end up together...there's more but I don't want to ruin it for a potential reader. I was pleasantly surprized in a couple of instances but not a whole lot.
The second was the preoccupation with homosexuality. I chalked it up to "attention to detail," assuming that maybe there was a lot of instances of homosexuality during the war. I am just as open as the next person...but I have to admit for a few chapters I was seriously considering putting the book down and not picking it back up. I understood the character that Greta played and it worked well within the story...and I understand the path used to get there (Flick's brother and his lifestyle)...but Diana and Maude kind of made me ask why. Although going back to my first complaint...I was very surprized by that development, not pleasantly, but surprized nonetheless.
All-in-all it was a good read that I enjoyed. Not on a par with Eye of the Needle, or my other favs Pillars of the Earth and Man From St. Petersburg...but still a very good effort.

Ken Follett has been one of my favourites since the age of 12. I once read an interview on him in which he said something along the lines of, "My aim in constructing sentences is to make the sentence utterly easy to understand...I've failed dreadfully if you have to read a sentence twice to figure out what I meant."
That is exactly how this book works. It's so easy and fun to read...especially if you're a woman who has always wanted some adventure in her life =)
The story takes place during WW2 (like most of Follett's books) and concentrates on the French resistance and British spies working in France.
Felicity "Flick" Clairet is the main character. She's one of the British spies risking her life to bomb German Nazi headquarters. Her husband, who she loved desperately, stabbed her in the back and screwed up a mission. Instead of just walking away with her tail in between her legs, "Flick" decides to take charge of the *impossible* mission...everyone doubts her and expects her to fail but she's detemined.
Suspense, adventure, some sex and love...
If you like women-kick-butt sort of books, you'll *love* this one!

Follett is no wordsmith, but he is a talented storyteller. The major characters show modest character development, but the reader can empathize with them quite easily. If you liked "Eye of the Needle" this is definitely worth the read. The book is suspenseful in the same fashion, but the key difference: instead of the good guy chasing the bad guy to prevent a horrible incident, it's the bad guy chasing the good guy. The book is a breeze to read and was very enjoyable. If you are not familiar w/ Follett, he writes in the fashion of Grisham and Crichton - an action screenplay loosely disguised as a novel. As for the "sex" in the book, it did not disrupt the plot, and was not out of the ordinary for this type of "bestseller." The Modigliani Scandal, by Follett, was more graphic, and that book was written over 15 years ago.

I loved this book. This book was based on actual events. I can't begin to guess the female spy that the character "Flick" represented. There were numerous times during WW II, that extraordinary events occurred involving female spies in France. A sudden opportunity would arise to gather information or to remove someone from the Gestopo. There were several daring female agents that served during this time. Many of the records for the SOE were sealed for many years, and others were actually destroyed at the end of the war. This book was exciting action at its best. One of the most interesting thing was how women went outside of the home and placed themselves in danger. This was during a time period when women did not work outside the home. However, England was literally imploding, because the men were fighting outside the country and women had to pick up the slack in factories, military, working the farms, and of course as spies. I could not put this book down.

Having read "Night Over Water" and loving it, I thought another Ken Follett novel would be just as entertaining. Well, I was mistaken. This one had all the elements of a "B' movie or, worse, a "chick flick". Why all the romance, I'll never understand; and the utter stupidity of the "leader", Michel, was almost beyond measure. Our heroine, Flick, of course had to be beautiful but also ruthless. It would have been nice to have skipped the "beautiful" and "falling in love" part. As for the history angle, it was a good read. I'll definitely read another Follett book but next time I'll be aware that he has some weaknesses.

Jackdaws presents Ken Follett back in action and gives us a glimpse of the authors greatness that's been lacking for so long. I was a bit surprised when i finished this new novel from my former favorite author. I liked it very much! Thought that the man was a has-been after several not-so-good books in the 90s. But Jackdaws borders to classic Follett reminiscent of great books like Eye of the needle, Triangle, The Key to Rebecca, The Man from St Petersburg and Lie down with lions. It's suspense from page one and the whole set-up of the story reminded at least me of Eye of the needle, the battle between two strong individuals (in this case a young, beautiful british woman and a german nazi making a career) as a war is going on in the background. Two people that can change the outcome of the WW2 and the classic scenario of a spy behind enemy lines. Follett has always had strong women in his books and it's no different in Jackdaws. The suspense grows even bigger when the reader is rooting for Felicity, aka Flick, and her gang of women volunteers when they're dropped behind enemy lines in France to destroy a radio station belonging to the germans.
Jackdaws also shows that Follett is at his best when he writes books with a historical backdropping or from one of the great wars, WW1 or WW2. Almost gave up on Follett after Code zero but now I'm looking forward to his next one!

I'm going to make this review short and sweet, since there's not much to be said here. Jackdaws is the second novel of Ken Follett's that I read after Eye of the Needle, and I think it was just as good. I was hooked during every single part of the story, the characters were very distinct and original, and I felt a really strong connection with the protagonists. I knew I was reading a really good story, since I would be thinking to myself "What's going to happen to Flick Clairet?" all day during work! I've read a handful of Ken Follett's books so far, and I have a lot to go, but this one's at the top with Eye of the Needle in my opinion.

The Eye of the Needle is supposed to be Follett's greatest spy thriller, but I believe that this one is much better. The plot is more complex and less predictable, which appealed to me. Though not as engaging as Pillars of the Earth (Follett's best), it came close, while being a much easier read.
My one complaint is that Follett's characters always seem a little flat. They are almost always single dimentional and never really surprise you. This is the only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5.
Fiction couched neatly in history, Jackdaws is an excellent read that remembers the sacrifice of the French Resistance and British spies, both who helped pave the way for the D-Day forces that invaded Normandy and preserved freedom for all. Our deepest thanks go to God and those who stood against evil during that dark hour.

Once again Ken Follett has drawn us into the midst of the second world war and the resistance movement. As the Jackdaws are united, their varied habits and personalities are as captivating as the plot. Mr. Follett's supurb use of action and dialogue grabs readers and rivets them to "JackDaws" page-turning intrigue. Ken Follett's talent shines through page after page, making "Jackdaws" a must for avid readers. Beverly J Scott author of Righteous Revenge

I have been a fan of Ken Follett for about 20 years. I have read all of his books except Night Over Water(partially read), Third Twin(started it 3 times), Hammer of Eden and Hornet Flight.
I think he should stick to WWII stories.
I never got into the Third Twin...I tried three times. I know an author never wants to be "type-cast" but this era (WWII) is his. He can enthrall a reader with the characters...the attention to detail...the feeling of BEING THERE. I give credit to The Eye of The Needle for turning me into a reader first and a writer second...it had that kind of an impact on me. Now on to Jackdaws...
I enjoyed the characters immensely and the pace of the book kept you into the story. The connections between the characters were well thought out. As usual, his attention to detail was very well crafted. I only had two main gripes about the book.
The first is the predictability of the storyline. Maybe being a writer I have honed that ability to foresee events before they shape up but I saw most of the events chapters ahead of their occurances. As an example...I knew from their first encounter that Flick and Paul would end up together...there's more but I don't want to ruin it for a potential reader. I was pleasantly surprized in a couple of instances but not a whole lot.
The second was the preoccupation with homosexuality. I chalked it up to "attention to detail," assuming that maybe there was a lot of instances of homosexuality during the war. I am just as open as the next person...but I have to admit for a few chapters I was seriously considering putting the book down and not picking it back up. I understood the character that Greta played and it worked well within the story...and I understand the path used to get there (Flick's brother and his lifestyle)...but Diana and Maude kind of made me ask why. Although going back to my first complaint...I was very surprized by that development, not pleasantly, but surprized nonetheless.
All-in-all it was a good read that I enjoyed. Not on a par with Eye of the Needle, or my other favs Pillars of the Earth and Man From St. Petersburg...but still a very good effort.

Ken Follett has been one of my favourites since the age of 12. I once read an interview on him in which he said something along the lines of, "My aim in constructing sentences is to make the sentence utterly easy to understand...I've failed dreadfully if you have to read a sentence twice to figure out what I meant."
That is exactly how this book works. It's so easy and fun to read...especially if you're a woman who has always wanted some adventure in her life =)
The story takes place during WW2 (like most of Follett's books) and concentrates on the French resistance and British spies working in France.
Felicity "Flick" Clairet is the main character. She's one of the British spies risking her life to bomb German Nazi headquarters. Her husband, who she loved desperately, stabbed her in the back and screwed up a mission. Instead of just walking away with her tail in between her legs, "Flick" decides to take charge of the *impossible* mission...everyone doubts her and expects her to fail but she's detemined.
Suspense, adventure, some sex and love...
If you like women-kick-butt sort of books, you'll *love* this one!

Follett is no wordsmith, but he is a talented storyteller. The major characters show modest character development, but the reader can empathize with them quite easily. If you liked "Eye of the Needle" this is definitely worth the read. The book is suspenseful in the same fashion, but the key difference: instead of the good guy chasing the bad guy to prevent a horrible incident, it's the bad guy chasing the good guy. The book is a breeze to read and was very enjoyable. If you are not familiar w/ Follett, he writes in the fashion of Grisham and Crichton - an action screenplay loosely disguised as a novel. As for the "sex" in the book, it did not disrupt the plot, and was not out of the ordinary for this type of "bestseller." The Modigliani Scandal, by Follett, was more graphic, and that book was written over 15 years ago.

I loved this book. This book was based on actual events. I can't begin to guess the female spy that the character "Flick" represented. There were numerous times during WW II, that extraordinary events occurred involving female spies in France. A sudden opportunity would arise to gather information or to remove someone from the Gestopo. There were several daring female agents that served during this time. Many of the records for the SOE were sealed for many years, and others were actually destroyed at the end of the war. This book was exciting action at its best. One of the most interesting thing was how women went outside of the home and placed themselves in danger. This was during a time period when women did not work outside the home. However, England was literally imploding, because the men were fighting outside the country and women had to pick up the slack in factories, military, working the farms, and of course as spies. I could not put this book down.

Having read "Night Over Water" and loving it, I thought another Ken Follett novel would be just as entertaining. Well, I was mistaken. This one had all the elements of a "B' movie or, worse, a "chick flick". Why all the romance, I'll never understand; and the utter stupidity of the "leader", Michel, was almost beyond measure. Our heroine, Flick, of course had to be beautiful but also ruthless. It would have been nice to have skipped the "beautiful" and "falling in love" part. As for the history angle, it was a good read. I'll definitely read another Follett book but next time I'll be aware that he has some weaknesses.

Ken Follet achieves the nearly impossible task of creating genuine suspense about an event that is well-known, using fresh characters, clever plotting, and surprising twists on an old story. You will enjoy this book on a long plane flight, or just sitting out on your porch during the lazy days of summer. I always enjoy Ken Follet's approach to history--crackerjack pacing, strong dialogue, and a deep desire to entertain. If only all writers cared as much about their audience's enjoyment as Follet does, TV would become obsolete.

Donald Gallinger is the author of The Master Planets

In the field of World War II historical novels, this is strictly
a commercial entry. I turned the pages, but I also felt Follett
searching to keep interest up (like with a female impersonator).
And as is too typical in the commercial fiction realm, these Nazis
are not very scary. Question for Mr. Follett: why do your Nazis
never have opinions about Jews, or Hitler, or anything else? No
matter, they only exist to add plot obstacles. This novel is full
of activity, but not so much excitement.
Steve Wiggins, author of "Streets of Warsaw"
Streets of Warsaw: A Novel of the Polish Resistance in World War II

I am a big fun of Ken Follette, and Jackdaws is definitely among his books I really enjoyed reading. This a World War II espionage novel, the action happens just prior to the Invasion Of Normandy. His historical account is both vivid and interesting, and I had hard time putting the novel down. When I finished it, I wish there was more - always a good sign! I recommend it.

With Jackdaws, Ken Follett returns to his most successful period, the darkest days of World War II... D-Day is approaching. 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 vital telephone exchange connecting the French telephone system to that of Germany. Bombers have been unable to wreak 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 forewarning of the invasion as possible.
Felicity Clariet, known as Flick, is a British secret agent responsible for sabotage; she has survived to become one of Britain's most effective operatives in Northern France. By day, Flick is a first-aider with the Nursing Yeomanry. She knows that the Germans' ability to frustrate 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 attack that goes horribly wrong, her world turns upside down. ...
Follett shows his gift for putting the reader right in the center of the action with plenty of authentic details a narrowly thwarted disasters. ...
By and large the Follett delivers a very pleasurable, very cinematic thriller about a ragtag, all-female band of British agents. Adventure, romance, enough dashes of humour to stave off the antacids and a bit too much nasty violence crowd the pages of what promises to be one of Follett's better novels.
The author is a freelance writer based in Mumbai

I love Ken Follet as an author, and this is definitely my most favorite of his books. I love WWII and this book talks about this time, but has enough drama, adventure, and love for those who just like good books. The characters were fantastic, the book kept you enthralled! I could not put it down, and I get it out and read it over ever once in a while because it is that good! I completely recommend it!!

Ken Follett has reached back and pulled out his magic again. In trhe vwein of the Day of the Jackal, this book is excellent. I bought it the day it came out and could not put it down. Many hours later, I knew I read a classic. Follett in his realism, character development and action again proves he is the very best. I would recommend this book along with The Last Man Standing to the two very best books of 2001. Even though Code to Zero was excellent, this is much better. Set in WWII France, Follet presents no stop development with classical heroes and foes. Buy this book and you remember all the great things about Follett.

This is a real page-turner. The characters are finely drawn, including the most minor ones. The plot is intricate and thoroughly believable. The reader is left with a feeling of awe at the courage and dedication, not to mention cleverness and adaptability, of the French Resistance. I have been a Follett fan since EYE OF THE NEEDLE, and am happy that the quality continues as stunning as it began.

I wasn't planning to review this book, but I decided I had to when I saw one reviewer mention that the sex diluted the story. That's absolutely ridiculous! There's one particularly descriptive scene, but other than that it does nothing to hamper the plot.
This book was highly enjoyable. I found myself reading chapter after chapter even after I had decided to stop reading for the night.

Mr. Follett, again, has written a book that you will read well into the night. You want to cheer on the female characters and hope they accomplish their goals. With a backdrop of World War II leading up to D-Day the reader will be swept into the story with feelings of hope, disappointment, fear and understanding.

Ken Follett is one of my favorite authors and I always enjoy his books. This latest one was no exception. It is about a team of female British operatives who try to disrupt Nazi communication in France so as to aid the Allies in the rapidly approaching D-Day.
The book pits the leader of the resistance against a smart and determined Nazi. The plot is tightly woven and the book is a quick and enjoyable read.

So the Resistance and the Germans are in the midst of a raging gun battle in an open square. Flick's husband is wounded and can't walk. She picks him up and carries him across the square to safety. Not drags mind you.. she throws him over her shoulder in a fireman's carry and trots off.

Fiction is one thing, but this is just beyond belief.

Overall the book is okay, but Mr. Follett is capable of much much better.

Equalling ,or possibly even topping , his best sellers, " Eye of The Neddle" and "The Key to Rebecca", Ken Folett has crafted a winner again. Just prior to D-Day, six women set out from England to cripple German communications in France. At every turn they have road blocks thrown up before them but how they overcome these obsticles makes an interesting and fascinating story. Six set out but try to guess the number that survive.

...got the audio book from Blockbuster to pass the time during a road trip with the family.
Overview:
Female Allied spies on a sabotage mission behind enemy lines in France just prior to D-Day. Based on a true story.
Opinion:
Decent plot, really paints a good picture of the brutal realities of occupied France during WWII and covert ops.
Lacked deep character development and the complexity of better novels in this genre. Good big screen movie candidate (which normally means bad book)
Not in the league of classic Ludlum, Clancy, etc.
I liked Follett's "The Third Twin", this one was a bit of a disappointment.

Jackdaws
I am a keen reader of Folletts work. Even though they all give similar flavor in different wrapping, I think his ability keep the reader on the tip toes must be commendable.
Jackdaws refers to a time when Allies were on putting final touches to the invasion of Europe. The main character named "flick", with remarkable endurance did the most damages to Germans before the invasion. They hit the heart of the German Communications, that connected the rest of Europe with Nazi HQ.
Storey is full of suspense the typical spy stuff even more it has a human angle to it as well. The author has added several twists to the story by way of adding several love and hate scenes to the picture. There is a similarity in this love and hate in Jackdaws as well as in "Lie down with Lions".
All in all JACJDAWS is a yet another excellent work from Ken Folletts.

In some ways this book reminded me of the way a woman rights fiction, and with the risk of sounding misogynistic (which I'm not), I just personally think men are better writers of fiction. Of course, unless a woman ghost wrote this book, it was written by a man, but the problems it has, in my opinion, are some of the same types I have found in reading novels by women.

Too much telling instead of showing, too much detail about stuff I didn't care about, characters too much to type, not enough powerfully written action, too much touchy-feelie type interaction written in a way that just misses the mark and maybe the worst problem, a protagonist that could have been so much more and failed to be really engaging (she lacked the ability to get me to empathize with her, feel her emotions or really root for her). Perhaps it is a very difficult task for a man to write a novel with a woman in the lead, and while I think maybe if Follet had been able to write this in the first person (at least the parts of the story from her pov) it might have made it a stronger story.

In any case, it is a decent action novel set in occupied France just before the invasion, so any that enjoy fiction set in that period will probably enjoy the book.

A predictable thriller the purpose of which seems to be to sell the movie rights. You can just SEE the special effects. Oh yes, plenty of gratuitous sex at regular intervals to broaden the appeal and assure an R rating. I'm not a frequent reader of this genre, but the plot borrows wholesale (with no apparent attempt to repay the debt) from "The 7 Samurai". Can't hold a candle to "Eye of the Needle".

I think that this is Ken Follett's best work in
a long time. Some critics have claimed that he
has been very overrated, but this book shows
what a master craftsmen can do within the context
of a bizare storyline. This book is a must read
for fans of this genre of writing.

This book is great. I've enjoyed many of Mr. Follett's books. Emailed the author to tell him it would make a great movie, if handled properly. I also enjoy books by Jack Higgins, Nelson Demille, and David Baldacci, among others. Check it out. Cheers! Peace! MDC

A bit of a slow starter, but within a few chapters it really had my attention.

Ken Follet has a knack for creating interesting characters that really draw you in, and Jackdaws is no exception. What fun to read a story of espionage and war with a great cast of female characters. At the end of the story I wanted to know what happens to the women who survived their missions.

I'd love to see a post-war sequel to this story.

In the field of World War II historical novels, this is strictly
a commercial entry. I turned the pages, but I also felt Follett
searching to keep interest up (like with a female impersonator).
And as is too typical in the commercial fiction realm, these Nazis
are not very scary. Question for Mr. Follett: why do your Nazis
never have opinions about Jews, or Hitler, or anything else? No
matter, they only exist to add plot obstacles. This novel is full
of activity, but not so much excitement.
Steve Wiggins, author of "Streets of Warsaw"
Streets of Warsaw: A Novel of the Polish Resistance in World War II

What can I say? I bought this book in the airport in Houston and finished it in the same day - no small task with a 500-page novel. I have been a staunch Follett fan ever since "The Key to Rebecca" and "The Eye of the Needle," and he does not disappoint with this new novel - quite the contrary, in fact. Felicity "Flick" Clairet is the most intelligent, pragmatic, hard-headed, and yet vulnerable heroine in years, and she makes "Jackdaws" into a wonderfully engrossing page-turner. It is truly a "female Dirty Dozen" (or perhaps "Half-Dozen") Bravo!

The greatest heroine character I ever read in this genre. While the story may be inplausible in parts, if you like WW2 suspense with a superb heroine you'll love this book. She's the type of character that you can't help but love whcih makes every scene she is in so much fun. Two other books I recommend in this genre are Mr Follett's "The Key to Rebecca" and Greg Iles - "Black Cross." Enjoy.

Story was constantly moving from start to finish. Well written And fast moving Wanted to keep the excitement going and read the book till it was completed....... in the wee hours of the morning Alvin A

Where can I learn more history than from reading Ken Follett? So exciting, so real, the best suspense story yet. And always tremendously satisfying to read about courageous women who fought for freedom. Thanks, and looking forward to the next one.

I greatly enjoyed this book. It may have been a little overly graphic in its details to violence and a little predictable but it made for a great read. It was easy to get hooked on it and you felt as if you were right there cheering the heros on while deprising the evil doers.

After I read Hornet Flight I got more interest in Ken follett's novels, this book is about brave women, who is risking their lives to blow up a Telephone system that can connect to anyone, anywhere. And it also tells about the Resistance fighters, love stories, the Gestaspo, and there everyone is talking about the Invasion. I still loves war history, but this is more than a war history.

I think that this is Ken Follett's best work in
a long time. Some critics have claimed that he
has been very overrated, but this book shows
what a master craftsmen can do within the context
of a bizare storyline. This book is a must read
for fans of this genre of writing.

This book is great. I've enjoyed many of Mr. Follett's books. Emailed the author to tell him it would make a great movie, if handled properly. I also enjoy books by Jack Higgins, Nelson Demille, and David Baldacci, among others. Check it out. Cheers! Peace! MDC

A bit of a slow starter, but within a few chapters it really had my attention.

Ken Follet has a knack for creating interesting characters that really draw you in, and Jackdaws is no exception. What fun to read a story of espionage and war with a great cast of female characters. At the end of the story I wanted to know what happens to the women who survived their missions.

I'd love to see a post-war sequel to this story.

In the field of World War II historical novels, this is strictly
a commercial entry. I turned the pages, but I also felt Follett
searching to keep interest up (like with a female impersonator).
And as is too typical in the commercial fiction realm, these Nazis
are not very scary. Question for Mr. Follett: why do your Nazis
never have opinions about Jews, or Hitler, or anything else? No
matter, they only exist to add plot obstacles. This novel is full
of activity, but not so much excitement.
Steve Wiggins, author of "Streets of Warsaw"
Streets of Warsaw: A Novel of the Polish Resistance in World War II

What can I say? I bought this book in the airport in Houston and finished it in the same day - no small task with a 500-page novel. I have been a staunch Follett fan ever since "The Key to Rebecca" and "The Eye of the Needle," and he does not disappoint with this new novel - quite the contrary, in fact. Felicity "Flick" Clairet is the most intelligent, pragmatic, hard-headed, and yet vulnerable heroine in years, and she makes "Jackdaws" into a wonderfully engrossing page-turner. It is truly a "female Dirty Dozen" (or perhaps "Half-Dozen") Bravo!

The greatest heroine character I ever read in this genre. While the story may be inplausible in parts, if you like WW2 suspense with a superb heroine you'll love this book. She's the type of character that you can't help but love whcih makes every scene she is in so much fun. Two other books I recommend in this genre are Mr Follett's "The Key to Rebecca" and Greg Iles - "Black Cross." Enjoy.

Story was constantly moving from start to finish. Well written And fast moving Wanted to keep the excitement going and read the book till it was completed....... in the wee hours of the morning Alvin A

Where can I learn more history than from reading Ken Follett? So exciting, so real, the best suspense story yet. And always tremendously satisfying to read about courageous women who fought for freedom. Thanks, and looking forward to the next one.

I greatly enjoyed this book. It may have been a little overly graphic in its details to violence and a little predictable but it made for a great read. It was easy to get hooked on it and you felt as if you were right there cheering the heros on while deprising the evil doers.

After I read Hornet Flight I got more interest in Ken follett's novels, this book is about brave women, who is risking their lives to blow up a Telephone system that can connect to anyone, anywhere. And it also tells about the Resistance fighters, love stories, the Gestaspo, and there everyone is talking about the Invasion. I still loves war history, but this is more than a war history.

Not Ken Follet's best effort. This book is basically a feminine reincarnation of The Dirty Dozen updated for political correctness. It's a triple dip: strong woman versus evil man, politicians who are bigots and liars, and the drag queen with inner strength and beauty. Then, throw in some romantic tension...boy and girl, that girl and her husband, her husband and another girl, girl and girl, and the Nazi and the sweet hooker. There are enough gays, lesbians and affairs in this book to keep Jerry Springer in material for a month. I'm a Ken Follet fan but this one just doesn't measure up. I felt as though the author was being condescending.

Although it is not the best one I read by FOllett, I must give 4.5 stars. Some reviewers say that you know from the start what the ending is like, i must disagree. You may know from the beginning what the mission is going to be, but you will certainly be surprised by the twists in the story, and you will not go to sleep until you finish it.

This book is the first Ken Follett novel that I have read.The plot includes a group of women who agree to go underground into Germany to destroy a key communications system.The author describes the situation in tense, terrifying prose that makes the reader feel that they are actually participating in the action.I became an instant fan of this writer.If you love a great thriller,buy this book!

1. I've heard a lot of good things about Ken Follett and was looking forward to this book.

2. Bottomline: it's not a bad book, but nothing significant beyond an average "ok" book. Translation: I don't feel any need or inspiration to get another Ken Follett book.

I'll say this, and it's probably all that needs to be said. This book made me want to live these times with the characters. They are ordinary women turned into heroes by the challenges they faced because of the evil that reigned during their prime. That's not to say they were perfect. ---Spoiler Alert: Cheating is never okay, no matter what the circumstances. --End Spoiler But it was good to go along with them for this necessary adventure of a lifetime.

This book is dedicated to the brave women of the Special Operations Executive that were dropped in occupied France. They took immense risks for the right cause. For our freedom. Follett creates the character of Felicity Clairet ("Flick") and lets us experience the dangers she encounters when she is dropped in France to assist the resistance. Very good WWII thriller.

This is the exactly the kind of thing I watch out for with very successful writers. He either got lazy or he let someone else do most of the writing. I can't understand how the others could have reviewed this so highly; the premise is good but the writing is awful. I don't demand that a book be realistic, but it has to feel real to bring a reader in; this one does not come close. Ken Follett has written some incredible books. This is not one of them.

I have to say this is probably one of the worst books I have read in recent years. I described it when asked by a friend as an Enid Blyton book for grown ups, it just needed a few "jolly good wheezes" in it to round off the general effect. The plot was totally implausible from beginning to end, and by half way through I did not care what happened to any of the characters, nor quite frankly what would happen at the end of the book.

The torture and interrogation of captured and or arrested resistance or allied forces was beyond credulity, that an important member of the resistance would divulge all she knew simply to save the embarrassment of wetting herself because she was not allowed to the toilet, was laughable, as were some of the other inventive tortures that can only be described as deviant.

That "The Jackdaws" themselves were recruited in less than 24 Hours for such an important mission from a bunch of transvestites and misfits was also comical. Do yourselves a favour and leave this book on the shelves of your local bookstore, or if you really must read it see if you can get my copy from where I left it on a Hong Kong Ferry.

Breathtaking! This book has suspense, drama, history, love, deception, and much more...
The story will keep you on your toes, it will make your hands cringe with tension...
It is a relentless chase, action packed...
One of Follett's best works!

From a Ken Follett fan of years, the last two books by Mr. Follett have been ridiculous. When he's on he's really on but when he's not it's a waste of money. This book, much like the last one, has a very predictable plot, albeit hard to believe, and so disappointing. Still hoping to see another good book from him.

What can I say but Wow. Much better than "Eye of the Needle" which was still a realitively good book. Follett developed everything well and I was riveted to the book and was disappointed when I had to put it down.

You will not put this book down. The book ranks right up there with his other great books; not all his books are in the top tier, but this one is. If you like Follett then you will like this book. The plot is as stated by all the other reviews so I will not restate the plot, but the read is as good as it gets.

i bought this book not really knowing what it was about, but once i started reading it i couldn't put it aside, I give it a 5 out of 5. i think anyone who loves a good book should definitly read this one, it was great. It's a great mixture of love, war and friendship. Ken Follet is a very good writer and has great style.

Actually this is the first of Ken Follett's book that I read. I just couldn't put it down.
It's ashame that the story is a bit short, and but it served as a wonderful reading material for a short weekend break!
I getting some more of Follett.....

This was a great idea for a book. However, I thought it would be about WWII and spies, but for the most part it was about homosexuality and promiscuity. It seemed that Mr. Follet cared more about sexual details than he did about telling a story about the SOE behind enemy lines in France. I also thought that Homosexuals were still a minority in todays world, let alone 1945. But 3 out of the 6 women in Mr. Follets book were gay. Great premise Mr. Follet, bad delivery. This is one reader who will not be coming back.

I have read almost all of his books and found that this story captured my attention from chapter one and I could not put it down. I would recommend it for any fan of his writing but also for anyone looking at reading a good historical fiction about a team of women who come together to influnce the direction of a war. Great read.

I am an a Patterson and Grisham reader and found Follett a nice change! This book kept my attention so well that I read it in one sleepless night! Great story line, interesting plot, wonderful writting! The best book I have read in a long,long time!

I love Ken Follett Books but this one seems to have been written by someone else. Gratuitous and cheap sexual content does not do him justice. I am only 50% through so far and maybe it will improve but at this stage it is like a cheap schoolboy thriller and compares most unfavourably to the majority of his other books - all of which I have enjoyed.

I had not read anything for several years when I picked up the book Jackdaws. This was my first Ken Follett book. I could not put this book down. This a brilliant WW 2 spy novel.....On to the next Follett novel.........

From one page to the next, you're always right in the middle of the action. Written almost totally ''behind'' enemy lines, the pace is spell-binding while and at the same time gives you a unique look into the Enemy itself

I was wondering if it were a true story or at least some of it true. Follett clearly thought women were as capable of great things as were men during the war. A truism seems to be that those who do evil, eventually get their dues. The story was a good read.

follett is so totally, entirely, fully, completely the man! staggering, absolutely staggering. what drama, what action, what emotion, what a book! so very human, so very identifiable, so very brave. brilliant!

As I have found with all of the boods Follett has written that I have read, they keep you constantly interested and on the edge of your seat. Although based in a time period long gone, there is enough remembrance of WWII that you could even get a little history out of them. Thanks Ken Follett.

This was a great book, I enjoyed it a lot, there are some books I can read in the train, and just continue it day after day, and there are books like these, where I just have to finish it, and once I do, just wish there was more.. Very interesting, described vivid images.. loved it..

With Jackdaws, Ken Follett returns to his most successful period, the darkest days of World War II... D-Day is approaching. 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 vital telephone exchange connecting the French telephone system to that of Germany. Bombers have been unable to wreak 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 forewarning of the invasion as possible.
Felicity Clariet, known as Flick, is a British secret agent responsible for sabotage; she has survived to become one of Britain's most effective operatives in Northern France. By day, Flick is a first-aider with the Nursing Yeomanry. She knows that the Germans' ability to frustrate 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 attack that goes horribly wrong, her world turns upside down. ...
Follett shows his gift for putting the reader right in the center of the action with plenty of authentic details a narrowly thwarted disasters. ...
By and large the Follett delivers a very pleasurable, very cinematic thriller about a ragtag, all-female band of British agents. Adventure, romance, enough dashes of humour to stave off the antacids and a bit too much nasty violence crowd the pages of what promises to be one of Follett's better novels.
The author is a freelance writer based in Mumbai

i really enjoyed this novel. it was suspenseful right to the end. seems to be a renewed interest in World War II for both authors and readers, for good reason. we cannot know how to protect our future unless we know what happened in the past, and the author weaves some history of the French Resistance and English underground assistance, Gestapo torture tactics into this intrigueing novel. Some outcomes you figure too good to be true, but that's what makes it a good read. 5 stars from me.

It is about Adolph Hitler and what he did. This book is for mature readers because of things he did to other people and what happened to him to make him hate the Jewish religion. This book is an historical biography. I like the book because it is about history. I would recommend this book to people that like history and reading about the Holocaust. The book's title is Jackdaws by Ken Follett.

I've read several Ken Follet books - loved 'Keys to Rebecca,' liked 'Eye of the Needle,' and found 'Pillars of the Earth' to be historically engrossing. 'Jackdaws' wasn't exactly riveting, but it certainly was filled with anxiety and suspense.

Flick Clairet, a British Special Ops officer with a husband in the French underground, has ideas on a new method for destroying a critical Nazi phone exchange in Paris. The first attempt went sour, but she's sure, with the right team, it can be done. That first attempt was foiled in part by alert German officer Dieter on Rommel's staff, and he's now not only interested in (personally) catching Flick, but focused also on breaking up underground rings that might support the Allied invasion everyone knows is coming...any day now.

We alternate between Flick and Dieter in their efforts to pursue their conflicting goals and eventually thwart each other with in a constant dance of tiny, but exhilarating, successes and appalling failures. This road is so well traveled historically that it's not particularly fresh, but the story is well written and the suspense is real.