Intriguing book. Well researched, history lesson, interesting characters, fast paced.

O livro possui um ritmo de narrativa muito fluido, capítulos curtos, isso faz com que o leitor leia um atrás do outro, e quando damos por si já lemos cem páginas. Há dois pontos de vista diferente: da protagonista britânica infiltrada na França, ocupada pelo exército alemão, e o ponto de vista de um oficial nazista. E isso se torna briga de cão e gato, a agente dos Aliados tentando concluir sua missão secreta, e o oficial nazista testando desvendar e interceptar o plano vigente dos Aliados, um sem conhecer o outro.
Com cenas de humor, ação, suspense, tortura e os horrores da segunda guerra mundial, inspirado numa história real, As Espiãs do D é, sem dúvida, um ótimo livro.

Nikt nie rysuje postaci jak Ken Follett. Nikt nie potrafi tak samo opowiadać. To zdecydowanie coś więcej niż thriller wojenny. Kolejna książka mojego absolutnie ukochanego autora za mną.

After a chunk of the French resistance in Reims is killed, a ragtag band of (mostly) English female saboteurs are recruited and trained to take their places and blow up an important telephone exchange operated by the Nazis. (They must be female because they're going in undercover as cleaners.)

Follett is from the Captain Obvious school of writing. In my favorite example, the protagonist Flick and her gay brother Mark go to a gay club in London.

A waiter said, "Hello, Markie," and put a hand on Mark's shoulder, but gave Flick a hostile glare.

"Robbie, meet my sister," Mark said. "Her name's Felicity, but we've always called her Flick."

The waiter's attitude changed, and he gave Flick a friendly smile. "Very nice to meet you." He showed them a table.

Flick guessed that Robbie had suspected she might be a girlfriend, and had resented her for persuading Mark to change sides, as it were. Then he had warmed to her when he learned she was Mark's sister.

But the novel is not all such tender scenes as this. In fact there is lots and lots of torture. "Some men enjoyed torturing prisoners," Follett writes. "They smiled when their victims screamed, they got erections as they inflicted wounds, and they experienced orgasms during their victims' death throes." After about the sixth explicit Nazi torture scene, some of it extremely disturbingly sexual, readers can be excused for thinking that some men enjoy writing about torture in the same way.

Jackdaws focuses on the approaching days before D Day when British Special Operations Executive, Felicity "Flick" Claret, has been tasked with taking down the Germans' communications center in France with a ragtag team of women that she has chosen for the mission to prevent interference with the Allied plans. What transpires is a riveting tale. Author Ken Follett dedicates this book to the fifty women sent into France as secret agents by the SOE during World War II, noting that thirty-six survived while the other fourteen died.

Toujours un plaisir d'écouter en audiobook sur Audible qui est une plateforme que j'affectionne tout particulièrement et qui fait un excellent travail !
Pour en revenir au roman en lui même :
J'ai trouvé que l'histoire dans son ensemble et le concept d'une équipe d'espionnes/saboteuses était vraiment sympa et plutôt bien exécutée. J'ai absolument adoré le dernier tier du roman où les choses s'accélèrent et que le rythme devient réellement haletant !
Une jeu dangereux du chat et de la souris entre un officier allemand et la chef d'équipe du réseau corneille, chacun essayant de déjouer les plans de l'autre.
Il m'a semblé quand même qu'il y avait quelques invraisemblances dans le récit. De plus, à certains moments, j'avais l'impression que l'auteur ne savait pas exactement quelle attitude adopter surtout par rapport au comportement des femmes. Cela arrive souvent chez les auteurs hommes quand il y a dans leur roman un grand nombre de femmes parmi les personnages principaux.
Cela ne m'a pas empêché d'apprécier le roman dans son ensemble bien que c'était un peu embêtant.

Ken Follet achieves the nearly impossible task of creating genuine suspense about an event that is well-known, with fresh characters, clever plotting, and surprising twists on an old story. You will enjoy this book on a long plane flight, or just sitting out on your porch during the lazy days of summer. I always enjoy Ken Follet's approach to history--crackerjack pacing, strong dialogue, and a deep desire to entertain. If only all writers cared as much about their audience's enjoyment as Follet does, TV would become obsolete.

8/10 en 2006.
El libro es de 2001, cuando Follett escribía sobre espionaje en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Para mí sus mejores novelas (vale, Los pilares de la Tierra está muy bien) son las ambientadas en esta época.

I just loved this book. The story is amazing and the fact that it is about an all-women adventure during the Second World War makes even more so.

A top-notch spy thriller - a team of badass chicks and a high-stakes mission where so much more can go wrong than right. Historical fiction doesn't get any better than this.

(I read this for my History of Espionage class during my senior year of college and liked it so much more than I expected to. I guess not all professor-assigned reading is bad.)

Whenever I read a Ken Follett novel, I expect a lot. Not every book I’ve read by him has been outstanding but most have and so I always hope for one of those. This one certainly qualifies.

It’s a story that takes place during the ten days just prior to the D-Day landings in 1944 during WWII. The French resistance is in full gear, expecting the imminent invasion, even if they don’t know the exact date. The SOE (Special Operations Executive) in London has determined to support the French resistance in its efforts to sabotage a key target which, in turn, will greatly aid the success of the invasion. The Gestapo HQ in Paris in the square at Sainte-Cécile, also houses the critical telephonic communications hub. If that were to be taken out of commission, then critical communications to those defending against the invasion forces would be severely impacted.

We follow along with Felicity “Flick” Clairet as she builds a team to infiltrate and destroy the communications hub. She chooses all women (Code name: "Jackdaws") so that they can pose as a cleaning crew and make it easier to withstand close scrutiny. Recruitment proves difficult and she must settle for inexperienced women with very little time to train. Most of them are misfits in one fashion or another – comparisons to the Dirty Dozen are not inaccurate.

One mark of an excellent thriller story is the quality of the primary antagonist and here, the character of Major Dieter Franck, working on Field Marshal Rommel’s staff, is a wonderfully drawn bad guy. He is extremely dedicated to his task of finding Flick and stopping her mission, and while he can be deliciously evil in his effective torture techniques, he also demonstrates admirable traits of intelligence and dogged determination.

The pacing here is perfect. A nice buildup of intrigue and emotion and stressful intensity interspersed with danger as well as softly romantic moments. The pages keep turning despite whatever else might be going on in your life that would drag you away from reading further. The danger is real, and not all characters survive but the ending is deeply satisfying.

Highly recommended.

A spy/war suspense book. The historical context and atmosphere of the book is nice, as expected from Ken Follett. The plot is interesting but many times I found myself thinking, did they really have to send complete amateurs to do the job? Couldn’t they find more skilled people for this (local or imported)? I admit that I do not know if the WW2 spy part of this book does represent real events or is just complete fantasy.

Bottom line, it was a good read but some of the decision making of the characters did not make sense.