Um dos melhores livros de Ken Follet. Foi quase impossível parar de ler.

Thriller histórico empolgante, baseado em factos reais. É um romance sobre a segunda guerra mundial, e que conta a história de quatro de mulheres que tem a coragem de porem em risco a sua própria vida para destruir uma central telefónica alemã.
Felicity é uma agente secreta, casada com Michael que pertence a resistência, que vive em Paris e possui a missão de destruir uma central telefónica. Mas o seu plano dá errado, e ela é obrigada a voltar a Grã-Bretanha. Não querendo desistir, ela tem a ideia de líder uma operação só de mulheres. O objectivo é disfarçarem-se de mulheres de limpeza e explodir a central.
É a primeira experiência de leitura deste autor inglês, um livro repleto de informação relativamente a espionagem e a tortura nazi. Foi chocante os relatos dos interrogatórios... O modo como os alemães utilizavam-se dos prisioneiros para infligir dor. " Nome de código Leoparda" foi um livro que me surpreendeu, apesar de ser obra que fala de guerra, aborda também a coragem e o sacrifício. Estaríamos dispostas a riscar a nossa vida em prol do nosso país?

Ken Follett si conferma il mio autore preferito.. sia che scriva lunghi romanzi d’amore ambientati in epoca medievale o di avventure di spionaggio più contemporanee, riesce sempre a catturare l’attenzione e a creare suspence. Non è mai banale ne ripetitivo. Ha uno stile unico: pochi sono abili come lui nel narrare con maestria storie di generi diversi, mantenendo sempre alti standard di scrittura. Inoltre in ogni suo ogni romanzo riesce a trasmettere al lettore la sua passione per la storia. Questo romanzo in particolare e’ un tributo alle donne che fecero da spie durante la seconda guerra mondiale o si unirono alla resistenza francese, contribuendo in sordina allo sbarco degli alleati. In ogni pagina si percepisce la stima dell’autore per queste donne e il rimpianto che non gli sia stato riconosciuto ufficialmente nessun merito.

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 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.

Quite good, story line keeps you engaged making it a quick read. Yet another reference to Ravensbruck, a part of WWII history that should receive more attention.

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.

I picked this up on holiday because I'd read through the books I'd brought and this was the only one among the English-language secondhand paperbacks at the hotel I thought I could stand. It's okay, for what it is. Follett keeps the adrenaline going, but there's not much else here. The main characters are all impossibly good-looking and/or bursting with raw sexual energy (one can practically cast it with the appropriate Hollywood A-listers as one reads). The plot is full of twists, as one would expect, but the decision to connect it with the D-Day invasion limits the potential for suspense; I mean, we know the invasion happened and it worked, and if the destruction of this telephone exchange plays a role in it then it has to succeed, too, right? The only real question is exactly who will die along the way, and I didn't care about or believe in any of the characters enough to get too anxious about their survival, and most of the deaths were pretty predictable. The book is full of clunky writing. This is just one bad sentence in a book full of bad sentences: "Beautiful women were like the gorgeous French impressionist paintings he collected: having one did not stop you wanting another." Ugh. A stupid cliche, overloaded with adjectives, and quite typical of the book overall. If all you require is adrenalin and you don't care about character or writing or, well, anything else, it's adequate junk reading. Graham Greene and John Le Carre do spy thrillers far, far better, of course, but I'd have been pretty surprised to find a book by either of them in the stack in my Mexican hotel.

Another inspiring narrative, Jackdaws by Ken Follett, places him firmly where he belongs; at the top of the literary mountain. This is a story of war, love and espionage. These elements can’t miss when stirred and served by Follett. Felicity (Flick) Clairet is a physically small woman but with the heart of a lion. She leads a group of French partisans on an unsuccessful raid in occupied France. Smarting from her failure she vows to try it again. I was surprisingly impressed with the concept of an all female operation. In the hands of Ken Follett I was sure it would be a great read; I wasn’t disappointed! It is a great story by a great writer.

This offering of Ken Follett, while not up to Eye of the Needle or The Pillars of the Earth was nevertheless a good book to have on a trip with many delays due to weather and mechanical problems.

It chronicles the travails of a group of British women who are tasked to destroy a German telephone exchange just before D-Day, important because it was the main conduit for most of the military phone traffic between France and Berlin .

The plot is well-developed but I find Follett's characterizations to be a little less than believable. I like my heroes to have more warts. My two biggest problems with the story are the incredible number of coincidences that work in the saboteurs' favor and the various love interest sub-plots that add melodrama but very little else to the narrative.

While certainly better than some of his later offerings like Code to Zero, This book did not motivate me to read more of Follett's work than I have already read.

I don't think I'm cut out for thrillers and espionage. All throughout this book, I kept grimacing and wincing and putting it down because I simply couldn't stand the suspense. In a two-hour movie, I'm dandy; but I don't have the nerves for a 400+ page book. I guess that means this was a good read? Depends on your perspective, right?

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.