Thought I read it before but turns out I didn't. At least I don't remember it and I think I would. Interesting German spy in Egypt giving Rommel the good poop on British dispositions. British major on his tail and the beautiful girls involved make for a fun and slightly sexy tale. The ending was pretty shlockey but most of the book was decent. I will leave it a 3 Stars, just barely.

I usually like Ken Follett and spy novels, but this book is just bad. It really felt like the author wasn't trying. Everything was cliche and predictable and yet oddly gratuitous. It was full of caricatures including some racist and sexist stereotypes that we had put behind us.

EDIT: I just realized this was published in 1980, and was only Follett's 3rd book. Everything I said above is still true, but I feel better knowing it was an early effort and not a regression...lol.

I thought the Key to Rebecca was a disappointment. I had heard good things of it and I think well of Ken follett. But the scenario I found surprisingly similar to Eye of the Needle, just set in Egypt.
The story just did not seem to get going until the last 50 pages. It was also unnecessarily graphic at times, which almost caused me to stop reading. Skimming portions made it possible to finish. But in the end, I found that I did not really care abot the characters enough to find satisfaction in the result. I liked the idea of the book Rebecca being used as a key to encrypted messages, but not much was made of this fact. I was hoping that somehow the book Rebecca would have been incorporated into the Key to Rebecca. But the spy could have used any other book and this novel would not have changed at all.

WWII SPY. novel about Rommel’s attack on Cairo Egypt and a native spy feeding him intelligence ok story just not my kind o f read

4.5 STARS

I've been reading Follett's backlist. This is a suspenseful espionage thriller. I became totally absorbed in the story with the authentic cast of characters- a femme fatale, an English officer, a German spy and a Jewish girl. All with flaws,strengths and contrasting moral compasses.

Hold your breath crazy suspense, sexual interludes, historical events, setting in Egypt, strong women, a tie to my favorite classic thriller- Rebecca by Daphne du Marnier (hence the title).

The officer and the spy were in a game of catch me if you can....

Whoosh, I feel like I've been on a runaway train! One of the most intense, action packed endings I've ever read.

Well Done Mr. Follett!

FYI-- Follett has a new novel coming out November 9, 2021 titled Never. I am already on hold for it at my library.

Read July 2021/ Library loan

What's not to love about a good WWII spy novel? It's so easy to get sucked right in. You've got Nazis: they're the bad guys. No need to develop this. They are the bad guys. They are the ultimate bad guys. They are, in fact, about as bad as guys get. Outside of Sauron's legions of Mordor, you don't really have a better example of a total absence of moral ambiguity. And really: between Joseph Goebbels and the Witch King leader of the nazgul, it's a toss-up for sheer wickedness.

Most of us have a pretty good idea how the second world war actually turned out and who won. I won't give anything away for those who haven't. It's quite a suspenseful story and I'd hate to ruin it for you. But even knowing the ending doesn't detract from the tension that is carefully constructed here. In the hands of a skilled suspense writer, the reader somehow forgets. "Oooh! I hope they stop that Nazi bastard!" I shouted at my book. "Otherwise I'll eventually be reading this in German, and won't know what's going on!"

Spies, seduction, suspense. These are my guilty pleasures when I just need to get away from it all and immerse myself in a world of intrigue and ethical absolutes. And  I'm very glad the bad guys lost. Take that, you Nazi pricks.

This is a typical Pot-boiler Thriller. Good Twists and Turns but sometimes predictable and contrived. Nevertheless interesting narrative. Keeps you wanting to know, what will happen next. Alex Wolfe, a Arab German Spy vs Vandam, the British Army Officer keep playing cat and mouse game. While Wolfs successfully entraps a British Officer to get to the Army Secrets, which he passes on the German Army causing losses to the British in Egypt. But Finally Vandam gets the better of Wolfe and traps the Germans by sending fake messages by reaching the Radio hidden by Wolfe in the Desert and also getting the Key which encrypts and decrypts the messages coded using the Book Rebecca. Along the way there are ambushes, melodrama, honey traps etc. Overall an enjoyable read.

I've never thought I'd be putting Ken Follett into "what's with all the sex category", but here we are. The blurb promises us a German superspy and sure, he's an expert in utilizing the technique of shaving female pubic hair to recruit them into his spy ring, but apart from that he's just hilariously incompetent. Thinking with his dick way more than with his head and getting so lost in orgies that he forgets to send reports to Rommel. The ending of the story is quite tense and good, so there's that.

*2.2*

Quizás siempre recuerde a este autor por su Serie más famosa "Los Pilares de la Tierra" o la “Trilogía del Siglo”, sin embargo antes de ser mundialmente conocido escribió numerosos libros sobre aventuras y espionaje y ésta es una de ellas.

Una verdadera historia de espías ambientada en Egipto en plena Segunda Guerra Mundial, en la que como siempre Follett logra que te metas en ella, como si estuvieras viendo una película que no puedes dejar a un lado.
El libro es corto (para lo que he leído del autor), se lee bastante rápido en un juego de estrategias entre un espía alemán con ascendencia árabe y un comandante del ejército británico. Me sorprendí a mi misma teniendo afinidad con el espía alemán, olvidando por momentos el objetivo del dominio alemán sobre el mundo, pero pronto a medida que se desarrolla la trama, esto cambia.
Follett consigue mezclar nuevamente ficción con realidad, regalándonos una obra vertiginosa, con algunos giros inesperados.

Hace poco también me he enterado de que este libro fue llevado a la gran pantalla en el año 1985 de la mano de David Hemmings, tendré que conseguir verlo a ver que tal su adaptación cinematográfica.

100% recomendado

Interesante novela de espías. Bien contada aunque algunas veces precipitada. Entretiene.

This is the third of seemingly 3 million books that Follett has written—the picture of him on the back dust jacket looks like a young Bob Dylan in tweed—yet it is already typical Follett: history-based, sexy in parts, borrowing heavily on real historical figures, in this case Rommel and Anwar el Sadat. The plot involves the search by British intelligence agent Major Vandam for the German agent Alex Wolff, a German Arab with a stiletto in his left armpit. There are Cairo’s most famous belly dancer, Sonya, and the elegant Elene, a Jewish Egyptian and an assortment of other characters who get involved on both sides in various forms of espionage and treachery. Follett has his usual assortment of odd historical facts that sometimes seem as justifications for his research, but he does keep the plot moving along at an almost feverish pace. The search for Wolff is really a search for the title “Key to Rebecca,” the coded key using the novel “Rebecca.” Wolff uses the code to construct his nightly messages, mostly to Rommel and his Afrika Corps as they close in on Alexandria and Cairo. Faced with the threat of losing the entire war, Vandam befriends and falls in love with Elene, and uses her as an informant, all the while frustrating her with his British cool attitude. Vandam is, conveniently, a widower of a year with a 10-year-old son, Billy, precocious far beyond his years. The sex in the novel is mostly between Sonya and Wolff and whoever Sonja seduces for Wolff, including, incredibly enough, a Major Smith who carries with him in his worn leather briefcase, sensitive plans for British defense of Cairo and against Rommel. While Sonya and Smith indulge in sex, Wolff sneaks out of a cupboard, gets the key to the briefcase out of Smith’s discarded shorts, opens the satchel and takes notes on the British plans. Convenient? Yes. Incredible? Yes. Only one of a few noteworthy happenings in the plot, necessary, I suppose, to keep it moving, but distracting in their improbability. Follett actually has Elene heroically draw an arrow in a convenient world atlas to indicate where Wolff is taking her and Billy. She draws the arrow in her own blood! Horrors! Actually, if one lets one’s brain idle down, this is an enjoyable read, though I felt at times that it should be a paperback and I should be at the beach, under an umbrella. Much greater Follett works were to follow.