Jackdaws

Rating:
Summary: Definitely the BEST book I've ever read!!
Review: 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?

Rating:
Summary: One-Upmanship
Review: Have you noticed the recent spate of fiction that presents us with women heroines that would make Rambo feel totally inadequate? Ken Follett evidently became aware of this and decided he'd take this idea one step further. Enter a whole group of feminine freedom fighters.

It's WWII and D-day is close at hand. The allies have decided that a key telecommunications center, located in a small town in France, needs to be taken out. After a failed attempt on the center that involved numerous French resistance fighters, British senior agent Felicity (Flick) Clairet returns to England and recruits five women (actually 4.5 women, but I can't explain that here) to return with her to destroy the heavily guarded installation. Give them a few days training and they are off. Also in the story is the intelligent, somewhat evil German colonel who is hot on their trail. The chase is on. One setback after another plagues the wily women, but they elude their pursuers until... Well read the book and see what happens.

If you like WWII secret agent stories then this is just for you. Action, suspense, sleeping around, infidelity, gay love, cross dressing, torture, Neanderthal SS men, all the usual ingredients of the genre are here.

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

It is May, 1944; the Allies are preparing for the invasion of Europe. In the occupied town of Sainte-Cecile, the French Resistance is preparing to blow up the chateau that now houses the crucial telephone switch connecting France with Germany. Bombers have been unable to inflict to disrupt communications for more than a few hours at a time. The Allies want to disrupt communications for as long as possible so to delay warning of the pending invasion.

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

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

Rating:
Summary: Generally good espionage novel leaves an odd feeling
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Classified WW2 mission
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Jacdaws: "Chicks with Sticks"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Stretch
Review: This is not Follett's best work. The plot is just not plausible. We have a group of untrained woman posing as commandos. After receiving several days of training in England, they are told to parachute into France with the task of destroying the central communication exchange link between France and Germany just prior to the D-Day invasion. The commandos include two lesbians, a transevestite and a convict paroled to participate in this dubious exercise.
The leader and heroine of this "Dirty Dozen" type group is Flick Clairet. Her main foe is a German officer named Dieter Franck.
Follett's character development of Dieter and the other Germans reminded me of the people in "Hogans Heros". They are distracted with fronification (Dieters French girfriend), Dieters "migraine" headaches and poor communications among themselves. Additionally, the Germans are constantly one step behind Flick and the French resistance.
The movie based on this book should include Jodie Foster as Flick. Maybe she can bring Hannibal with her to tortue the resistance along with Dieter.
Please save your money on this one and read Pillars of the Earth by Follett. That is an excellent read compared to Jackdaws.