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Jackdaws

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Overview

"D day is approaching. They don't know where or when, but the Germans know it'll be soon, and for Felicity "Flick" Clairet, the stakes have never been higher. A senior agent in the ranks of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) responsible for sabotage, Flick has survived to become one of Britain's most effective operatives in northern France. She knows that the Germans' ability to thwart the Allied attack depends upon their lines of communication, and in the days before the invasion, no target is of greater strategic importance than the largest telephone exchange in Europe." But when Flick and her Resistance leader husband try a direct, head-on assault that goes horribly wrong, her world turns upside down. Her group destroyed, her husband missing, her superiors unsure of her, her own confidence badly shaken, she has one last chance at the target, but the challenge, once daunting, is now near-impossible. The new plan requires an all-woman team, none of them professionals, to be assembled and trained within days. Codenamed the Jackdaws, they will attempt to infiltrate the exchange under the noses of the Germans - but the Germans are waiting for them now and have plans of their own. There are secrets Flick does not know - secrets within the German ranks, secrets among her hastily-recruited team, secrets among those she trusts the most. And as the hours tick down to the point of no return, most daunting of all, there are secrets within herself.

Editorial Reviews

"The book's celebration of uncommon courage and unlikely heroes couldn't be better timed…a distaff Dirty Dozen."-People"With its vivid characters, suspense, patriotism, and examples of supreme bravery, Jackdaws is a fitting tribute to the women of World War II."-Orlando Sentinel""Compelling reading…great entertainment."-The Baltimore Sun""A very entertaining, very cinematic thriller about a ragtag, all-female band of British agents, code-named Jackdaws, sent to blow up a key telephone exchange in France on the eve of D-Day…[Jackdaws] promises to be one of Follett's most popular novels ever." "Publishers Weekly""Cleverly plotted…the characters are sharply drawn and fully realized [and] the pace is rapid-fire."-Minneapolis Star-Tribune""A sort of distaff dirty (half) dozen. They don't come any tougher, smarter, braver, or, for that matter, deadlier than Major Felicity (call her ‘Flick') Clairet. Quintessentially female and sexy as all get out, she kills without compunction if that's the way the mission goes."-Kirkus Reviews""Carried off with the kind of galvanic skill that was the hallmark of Follett's early books…a memorable, complex heroine."-Publishing News""For fans of the '60s movie The Dirty Dozen, this could be called The Perfumed Six…It's certainly pleasant to have the main characters be female."-The Buffalo New""[Follett is] dead on-target…updating that World War II workhorse in which a gang of misfits goes behind Nazi lines to do the impossible…thoroughly entertaining."-Booklist""Suspenseful, gripping."-New York Post""Deeply satisfying."-Entertainment Weekly""Follett delivers one of his most entertaining thrillers."-Denver Post -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Ken Follett

Well known as a writer of international best sellers, Ken Follett was born in Wales and began his career as a newspaper reporter in Wales and in London. His first bestselling novel, The Eye of the Needle, won the Edgar Award and was adapted as a film starring Kate Nelligan and Donald Sutherland. He followed this success with four more bestselling thrillers - Triple, The Key to Rebecca, The Man from St Petersburg, and Lay Down with Lions. His novel, Pillars of the Earth, departed from the thriller genre and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 18 weeks. It also reached the number one position on lists in Canada, Great Britain, and Italy, and was on Germany's bestseller list for six years. He followed Pillars of the Earth with Night over Water, A Dangerous Fortune, and A Place Called Freedom, before returning to the writing of thrillers with The Third Twin, a scorching suspense novel. Miniseries rights to this book were sold to CBS for $1,400,000. The series, starring Kelly McGillis and Larry Hagman, was broadcast in November of 1997. In November of 1998, Follett published The Hammer of Eden, another suspense story. Ken Follett is married to Barbara Follett, who is the Member of Parliament for Stevenage in Hertfordshire. He is a lover of Shakespeare and an amateur musician who plays bass guitar in a band called Damn Right I Got the Blues. He is also chair of the National Year of Reading 1998-99, a British government initiative to raise literacy levels, president of the Dyslexia Institute, and a council member of the National Literacy Trust.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Signet

Filesize

1.27 MB

Number of Pages

512

eBook ISBN

9780786571710

Awards

  • Audie Award

Excerpt from: Jackdaws by Ken Follett

ONE MINUTE BEFORE the explosion, the square at Sainte-Cecile was at peace. The evening was warm, and a layer of still air covered the town like a blanket. The church bell tolled a lazy beat, calling worshipers to the service with little enthusiasm. To Felicity Clairet it sounded like a countdown.

The square was dominated by the seventeenth-century chateau. A small version of Versailles, it had a grand projecting front entrance, and wings on both sides that turned right angles and tailed off rearwards. There was a basement and two main floors topped by a tall roof with arched dormer windows.

Felicity, who was always called Flick, loved France. She enjoyed its graceful buildings, its mild weather, its leisurely lunches, its cultured people. She liked French paintings, French literature, and stylish French clothes. Visitors often found the French people unfriendly, but Flick had been speaking the language since she was six years old, and no one could tell she was a foreigner.

It angered her that the France she loved no longer existed. There was not enough food for leisurely lunches, the paintings had all been stolen by the Nazis, and only the whores had pretty clothes. Like most women, Flick was wearing a shapeless dress whose colors had long ago been washed to dullness. Her heart's desire was that the real France would come back. It might return soon, if she and people like her did what they were supposed to.

She might not live to see it -- indeed, she might not survive the next few minutes. She was no fatalist; she wanted to live. There were a hundred things she planned to do after the war: finish her doctorate, have a baby, see New York, own a sports car, drink champagne on the beach at Cannes. But if she was about to die, she was glad to be spending her last few moments in a sunlit square, looking at a beautiful old house, with the lilting sounds of the French language soft in her ears.

The chateau had been built as a home for the local aristocracy, but the last Comte de Sainte-Cecile had lost his head on the guillotine in 1793. The ornamental gardens had long ago been turned into vineyards, for this was wine country, the heart of the Champagne district. The building now housed an important telephone exchange, sited here because the government minister responsible had been born in Sainte-Cecile.

When the Germans came they enlarged the exchange to provide connections between the French system and the new cable route to Germany. They also sited a Gestapo regional headquarters in the building, with offices on the upper floors and cells in the basement.

Four weeks ago the chateau had been bombed by the Allies. Such precision bombing was new. The heavy four-engined Lancasters and Flying Fortresses that roared high over Europe every night were inaccurate -- they sometimes missed an entire city -- but the latest generation of fighter-bombers, the Lightnings and Thunderbolts, could sneak in by day and hit a small target, a bridge or a railway station. Much of the west wing of the cheteau was now a heap of irregular seventeenth-century red bricks and square white stones.

But the air raid had failed. Repairs were made quickly, and the phone service had been disrupted only as long as it took the Germans to install replacement switchboards. All the automatic telephone equipment and the vital amplifiers for the long-distance lines were in the basement, which had escaped serious damage.