This was the novel that gave Follet star quality status in publishing circles. Not only was it a best seller but it also was adapted into a movie, starring Donald Sutherland.

Here are some reasons to read THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE:

(1) PRECISION: you like reading about cool, precise heroes or anti-heroes or villains who are painfully precise in their plans, the best at what they do and are totally "stone cold.";

(2) WWII BUFF: you love to read about the "big thrills" of WWII; this has it since the Ge More...

Eye of the Needle, a sharply-written WWII era thriller, is miles away in style and length from the mammoth, medieval epics Follett would later create. Though not a mindbendingly difficult read, the quality of the writing was already present at this early stage. Extra kudos must be given to any author who can switch gears and dabble in different genres. Working outside your comfortable corner can not be the easiest thing to do.

http://verovsky-meninadospoliciais.bl...

Carl Sandburg said (in another context) "it pays to have a good forgettery." In this case, a good forgettery allowed me to reread Ken Follett's EYE OF THE NEEDLE (British title, STORM ISLAND) with every bit as much enjoyment as when I first read it 30 years ago. Also, having recently reread THE DAY OF THE JACKAL, it was fun to compare these two similar, but different, thrillers.

Both books feature multiple points of view -- quite a few of them in Follett's case -- and on both sides of the good gu More...

This is my first Ken Follett book (much to the disappointment of my wife) but I wanted to tackle something small before attempting on of his epics. Eye of the Needle tells the story of a German master spy ‘The Needle’ and his attempt to uncover the plans of the English army during World War 2 (a few weeks before D-Day). This book was a little light on the espionage and too much focused on the generic thriller formula. I also felt the feeling of World War 2 was missed; this book could have been a More...

Heinrich Faber is Jason Bourne before there was a Jason Bourne. He is a great ani-hero. The book is gritty and you have to keep in mind that you are in the world of the mid 1930s and 40s… to it can be painfully slow… It is not written in a “cool” American style with double back flips and “mind blowing” technology. It is more British, meaning there is a methodical story of detail. within the characters there are a lot of inner emotions. and the story tends to allow for a lot of complaining. But t More...

When Faber arrives at Storm Island near Aberdeen, he finds Lucy who lives with her crippled husband and is so very lonely,as her embittered husband has never touched her after marriage. Lucy then embarks on a relationship with Faber, although Faber really 'seems to come to love' someone for the very first time in his life. But in my opinion I do not think Faber is capable of "love" he is trained to look at people as objects and kill immediately when threatened. Both need release from pent up sex More...

To be fair I haven't read it since the 8th grade, so I've no idea how it holds up. But my history teacher, a tall, handsome, broad shouldered man in his mid 30's who read every day at lunch and seemed to blaze through a book a week, one day pulled me aside and said he thought I'd enjoy reading this. I had a huge crush on him and couldn't believe he'd take the time to recommend a book to any student, let alone me (he was the track and basketball coach and by far favored his athletes. i also had t More...

Ken Follett is best known for his historical fiction such as Pillars of the Earth , and is one of the most successful novelists around today.

This book, Eye of the Needle is one of his earlier works (dating from the late 70s), and while less impressive than some of his other works, still provides an entertaining action story and quick read.

The action centers around a Nazi spy, code named Die Nadel (the Needle), who is attempting to learn the truth about the Allies D-Day Invasion. He needs to get More...

Ken Follett’s Eye of the Needle

Plot:

One enemy spy knows the secret of the Allies greatest deception, a brilliant aristocrat and ruthless assassin -- code name: "The Needle" -- who holds the key to ultimate Nazi victory. Only one person stands in his way: a lonely English woman on an isolated island, who is beginning to the killer who has mysteriously entered her life.

My Review and Thoughts:

Ken Follett is a master at words and capturing those words in a brilliant story of suspense, deception, and More...

Ken Follett’s THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE is such a compelling well-written story, that it seems a shame to mention the one weak spot in it, which involves an unbelievable plot twist.

But first, I should like to tell you something about it. The title refers to a German spy who was working behind British lines during the second world war. His nickname is Die Nadel, or the needle, because he is about the only spy that the Germans have working for them who is not a complete amateur.

This seems hard to beli More...

During World War II the Allies went to extraordinary lengths to make the Nazis believe the coming invasion would be at Calais, not Normandy. They used plywood artillery and inflatable dummy tanks and other faux constructions to fool the Nazis from the air. But from the ground these were obvious fakes. Had one German agent been able to get near these dummy forces on the ground, the deception--crucial to the success of D-Day--wouldn't have worked. The premise of this espionage thriller asks, what More...

This was a good book that I found difficult to read. Mind you the book itself is not a difficult read at all, Follett plots well and writes good dialogue. It is about as good as anyone who enjoys fast-paced yet well-crafted spy books can anticipate. My difficulty in reading it came due to two reasons:

1. It is remarkably similar to Daniel Silva's "The Unlikely Spy" (although "Needle" came out 20 years earlier), a book I loved. The plots are close but Silva's characters are more developed and nuan More...

When the radio packed up in my car and I got fed up of listening to music, I came up with the idea of trying an audio book. In all my years of reading, audio is one format I've never tried, so it was a new experience for me. And was I pleased I gave it a chance! My half hour journey to work (same one for 19 years!) was a real drag, but now I almost look forward to taking a steady drive to work while listening to the latest installment. Admittedly, I may have slightly overrated EotN because of my More...

I would have read this book in a day, but I had to work when I started it. However, I did manage to finish it coming home after drinking wine & finishing with Heradura- rather than pass out I managed to complete it. Well Done, Mr Follet, Well Done!!

I loved this book so much, was reading on my nook and I was hooked after page 13. I gave it 5 stars, but I really would have given it 4.5 if I could, only because I would have preferred an alternate ending. Ken Follett is a genius. The whole time More...

I listened to this on CD. The CD was recorded in 1990 and sometimes sounded as though the reader had walked into a tunnel, kind of muffled. Also, I didn't care for the reader, Graeme Malcolm. Sometimes he would stop reading... and you'd think it was the end... of the paragraph... or starting a new section... and then he would come back... and you'd still be in the same scene. He also read slowly and didn't give a lot toward characterization in voices or accents.

The book, though, I enjoyed. I ha More...

Until I started sharing books with my retired father, suspense thrillers about spies weren't my thing at all. After reading Eye of the Needle I'm still not sure if the genre is for me. The book's basic idea is that a German spy must be stopped by MI-5 before he tells Hitler that the massive camp of Allied troops ready to invade Calais is a bluff. As plots go, it's pretty brilliant because it focuses on the limited task of finding and silencing the spy, yet manages to make the consequences hugely More...

Today, most people know Ken Follett as the author of mammoth works of historical fiction. I mean, we’re talking novels that would make War and Peace turn and run like Napoleon’s troops from Moscow. (See what I did there?) It’s a known fact that you can construct a home able to withstand an F5 tornado solely from copies of Pillars of the Earth, World Without End and Fall of Giants. (Note: this house will not have doors, windows, a roof, or the ability to withstand an F5 tornado).

Before he starte More...

Was okay - part of the problem was that I accidentally listened the second half of this before the first half. I think it would have been better and more entertaining had I listened to it in the correct order. As it was, all the twists, suspense, etc was ruined for me when I went back to the first half (I will blame this on a combination of Audible which downloads in parts and my ipad on which I listen to my books - as I cannot see the full title [including part 1/part2] for books. Somehow they More...

Ken Follett
Eye of the Needle
New York, Harper Collins, 2010
445 pp. $9.99
978-0-06-202089-5

On June 6, 1944 on the beaches of Normandy, more than 160,000 Allied troops set foot upon the calm beaches of Normandy, a place where, by the end of the assault, would leave more than 4,400 Allies dead and countless more wounded or taken prisoner. The defending side, the Germans, lost between 4,000 and 9,000 of their own, the deaths of their men hurting both sides greatly. Now to think that the answer to chan More...

Ken Follett must be the master of historical fiction. In this example, we're in 1944 Britain following the last German spy still holding to anonymity, and now he's got vital data that would jeopardize the Allies' invasion of France, causing the war to drag on for several more years. He had to break some laws to get the information, finally blowing his cover, and now he's on the run.

Will he get the information back to Berlin? In fact, we know he didn't, because it's all history. That's the vital More...

This is really sad. What I learned from this book was, when you clean a bookshelf in your bookstore and wind up handling 400 or so pulp thriller war novels, you automatically become interested in that genre for awhile. My husband and I spent the two snowstorm days of extra Christmas vacation cleaning our Westerns,War and Guys with Big Guns section and reshelving them so they can be seen - and thus purchased! Marketing is so simple. And then we packed a box of books and some wine and went down to More...

Professionalism and emotions are like similar poles of a magnet. No matter how much you try to bring them closer together, they will want to move away from each other. In real life such a coming together is not without its share of disasters. A small thread of what is contained in this story is what I wanted to capture in the lines above. I found this to be a mixed bag, while not entirely an espionage thriller this is an immensely readable book.

The backdrop is quite an interesting one with Germa More...

I chose to read Eye of the needle by Ken Follet because there were no Pillars of the Earth copy available in the book shops I had searched. Knowing that Ken Follet was a successful thriller writer before Pillars of the Earth published, I was confident enough the book will not disappoint me and I was right. :)

Eye of the Needle is the story that was set up in the period of second world war with the German Master Spy ‘Die Nadel’ (or ‘The Needle’), MI5 officers Godliman, Bloggs and a young lady Lucy More...

I was introduced to this book by my father. Ken Follet writes in a style that presents many perspectives and tells you everybody's side of the story. This is a style that i am rather fond of in other authors, so i really enjoyed this book. I also liked this book because it is about WW2, which i love studying because, like Percival Godliman, i really enjoy history.

When i started this book my dad mentioned that i would find myself rooting for both sides, Faber and MI5. I was doubtful because Henr More...

I first heard of Ken Follett from his book Pillars of the Earth. I have greatly enjoyed that book as well as some of his other more recent novels and figured I would look a little at some of his early works. This book title is one I am actually familiar with from my youth when I was looking up the book Eyes of the Dragon by Steven King and later Eye of the World by Robert Jordan before I knew the name Ken Follett.

This is a World War II based spy story, or at least there seems to be a spy story b More...

Not a bad little read. Light yet still filled with interesting facts and great descriptions.

Page 295
"The later years of the war had produced a different kind of RAF officer Bloggs thought, as he sat on a soft chair in the scramble room, close to the fire, listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof and intermittenltly dozing. The Battle of Britain pilots had seemed incorrigibly cheerful, with their undergraduate slang, their perpetual drinking, their tirelessness and their cavalier disregard More...

'She said: ‘Can I have a word with you?’
He seemed to hesitate, then said: ‘I’m undressed.’
‘So am I,’ she giggled, and she opened the door with her duplicate key. He was standing in front of the radio with some kind of screwdriver in his hand. He wore his trousers and no singlet. His face was white and he looked scared to death.
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her, not knowing what to say. Suddenly she remembered a line from an American film, and she said: ‘Would you buy a lonely More...