Book Review of Eye of the Needle

Much better than Hornet Flight and far better than The Man From St. Petersburg, that's the quick summation of Eye of the Needle.



I remember in one of the writing classes I took we discussed what makes a thriller and what makes a mystery. That instructor said that Dick Francis wrote mysteries. I've heard others say that they are thrillers. This one instructor said that Thrillers need to deal with subjects that are grand in scale and possibly Earth-shaking. The Man From St. Petersburg, Hornet Flight and The Pillars of the Earth all lacked this grandiose scale. Eye of the Needle made up for what the others lacked and made the novel better than the others if only for that reason.

Another thing that Ken Follet's books demonstrate is how great novels are based on good characterization not great plots. You can have both, but without great characters you can't have a great book. Eye of the Needle, as so many of Follet's novels, is filled with terrific characters.

I marked one passage:

"It is for places like this that the word "bleak" has been invented. The island is a J-shaped lump of rock rising sullenly out of the North Sea. It lies on the map like the top half of a broken cane, parallel with the Equator but a long, long way north; its curved handle toward Aberdeen, its broken, jagged stump pointing threateningly at distant Denmark. It is ten miles long. Around most of its coast the cliffs rise out of the cold sea without the courtesy of a beach. Angered by this rudeness the waves pound on the rock in impotent rage; a ten-thousand-year fit of bad temper that the island ignores with impunity."

I loved the book and can't wait to read another from Follet.