Graham Greene he's not. Not even John le Carre or Geoffrey Household. But Ken Follett is here with that particularly British tone of controlled, leisurely tension—you'll feel it on the very first page—that can transform a not-very-original spy plot into a sly gavotte that has you holding your breath as the dancers slowly come together. The familiar D-Day gimmick: only one man can ruin the secrecy of the Normandy landing—a top German undercover agent known as "The Needle" because of his deadly stiletto. But Follett immediately declares his independence from cliches: by luring us over to The Needle's point of view, forcing us to admire his ingenuity (even as he murders a harmless landlady and then his own confederate); by making three-dimensional fellows of the British intelligence men who must catch The Needle before he makes contact with a German submarine; and by dropping in the apparently extraneous story of a young, unhappy man and wife who've been living on an empty North Sea island ever since the husband lost his legs in a honeymoon car accident. Ah, but of course, we know that this couple will be linked to The Needle, and it's with satisfaction that we watch the spy being washed up, half dead, on that island in his attempt to reach a German ship. What then follows—the romance between The Needle and the lovestarved wife, their hideous and unwilling death-duel—is badly marred by explicit sex and explicit sentimentality that, like Follett's occasional anachronistic or heavyhanded fumbles, violate the tone and period feel. But perhaps it's just as well: if Follett's debut were flawless, he'd have nowhere to go. As it is, Eye of the Needle introduces a fresh if not especially distinctive voice in suspense—and is easily the best first novel in the espionage genre since The Day of the Jackal.
Pub Date: July 31, 1978
ISBN: 006074815X
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Arbor House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1978
A strongly felt, if not terribly gripping, sendoff for a Turow favorite nearly 35 years after his appearance in Presumed...
Trying his final case at 85, celebrated criminal defense lawyer Sandy Stern defends a Nobel-winning doctor and longtime friend whose cancer wonder drug saved Stern's life but subsequently led to the deaths of others.
Federal prosecutors are charging the eminent doctor, Kiril Pafko, with murder, fraud, and insider trading. An Argentine émigré like Stern, Pafko is no angel. His counselor is certain he sold stock in the company that produced the drug, g-Livia, before users' deaths were reported. The 78-year-old Nobelist is a serial adulterer whose former and current lovers have strong ties to the case. Working for one final time alongside his daughter and proficient legal partner, Marta, who has announced she will close the firm and retire along with her father following the case, Stern must deal not only with "senior moments" before Chief Judge Sonya "Sonny" Klonsky, but also his physical frailty. While taking a deep dive into the ups and downs of a complicated big-time trial, Turow (Testimony, 2017, etc.) crafts a love letter to his profession through his elegiac appreciation of Stern, who has appeared in all his Kindle County novels. The grandly mannered attorney (his favorite response is "Just so") has dedicated himself to the law at great personal cost. But had he not spent so much of his life inside courtrooms, "He never would have known himself." With its bland prosecutors, frequent focus on technical details like "double-blind clinical trials," and lack of real surprises, the novel likely will disappoint some fans of legal thrillers. But this smoothly efficient book gains timely depth through its discussion of thorny moral issues raised by a drug that can extend a cancer sufferer's life expectancy at the risk of suddenly ending it.
A strongly felt, if not terribly gripping, sendoff for a Turow favorite nearly 35 years after his appearance in Presumed Innocent.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4813-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.
Another Brown (Inferno, 2013, etc.) blockbuster, blending arcana, religion, and skulduggery—sound familiar?—with the latest headlines.
You just have to know that when the first character you meet in a Brown novel is a debonair tech mogul and the second a bony-fingered old bishop, you’ll end up with a clash of ideologies and worldviews. So it is. Edmond Kirsch, once a student of longtime Brown hero Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist–turned–action hero, has assembled a massive crowd, virtual and real, in Bilbao to announce he’s discovered something that’s destined to kill off religion and replace it with science. It would be ungallant to reveal just what the discovery is, but suffice it to say that the religious leaders of the world are in a tizzy about it, whereupon one shadowy Knights of Malta type takes it upon himself to put a bloody end to Kirsch’s nascent heresy. Ah, but what if Kirsch had concocted an AI agent so powerful that his own death was just an inconvenience? What if it was time for not just schism, but singularity? Digging into the mystery, Langdon finds a couple of new pals, one of them that computer avatar, and a whole pack of new enemies, who, not content just to keep Kirsch’s discovery under wraps, also frown on the thought that a great many people in the modern world, including some extremely prominent Spaniards, find fascism and Falangism passé and think the reigning liberal pope is a pretty good guy. Yes, Franco is still dead, as are Christopher Hitchens, Julian Jaynes, Jacques Derrida, William Blake, and other cultural figures Brown enlists along the way—and that’s just the beginning of the body count. The old ham-fisted Brown is here in full glory (“In that instant, Langdon realized that perhaps there was a macabre silver lining to Edmond’s horrific murder”; “The vivacious, strong-minded beauty had turned Julián’s world upside down”)—but, for all his defects as a stylist, it can’t be denied that he knows how to spin a yarn, and most satisfyingly.
The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-51423-1
Page Count: 461
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
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