The Eye of the Needle

 The Eye of the Needle

By Ken Follett

I came across this book one evening after the kids had found and ransacked a box of books my parents' dropped off about a year ago. I was just off Cloud Cuckoo Land, and thought I'd give it a shot. It was a winner.

Set in England during World War II, the book tells the tale of a German spy whose codename is "The Needle" owing to his penchant for killing with a stiletto knife. As cover, he goes by Henry Faber. With D-Day approaching, German officials send Faber to East Anglia to assess the size of the army amassing there. What he finds is a ruse -- inflatable tanks, plywood planes, and half-built barracks designed to trick the Germans into thinking that the landing target will be Calais. Faber photographs the truth and sets about returning the information to Germany so it can better defend the true location, Normandy.

Standing in his way is Britain's Military Intelligence (MI), whose ranks have expanded to include the likes of Percival Godliman, a Medieval historian who served with distinction in the previous war. Godliman (whose name is, come on, a bit obvious) and his colleagues track Faber to a remote island off the coast of Scotland, where he awaits a rendezvous with a U Boat. But it is one of the inhabitants of the island, Lucy, who becomes the real hero. She and her husband, David, had sought refuge on the island four years before when a car accident on the couple's wedding night left David legless -- and humorless. When Faber shows up, they are initially just glad to see another human being, and Lucy especially so. She conducts a tryst with Faber, who becomes uncharacteristically smitten with Lucy and so holds off on killing her -- which becomes his fatal mistake.

Whoa, what a page turner this was! Full of fairly graphic violence and, toward the end, sex, this was more of a book than I bargained for. I'd picked it up expecting silly cliches, but by the end I couldn't put it down -- even though I knew what the outcome had to be. I might check out more Follett in the future.