Eye of the Needle is a classic Follett war book. A perfect spy, and a perfect cop. The cop hunting the spy, they spy running from the cop - although this sounds simple, Follett's highly entertaining writing style compensates (in a big way) for the somewhat un-origional plot.
Don't go getting me wrong though, I love Follett's books, his writing and pretty much everything about him, it's just that he choose a pretty boring thing to write about this time. Once you've read one German/Allies war novel, you've read all German/Allies war novels.
Eye of the Needle still manages to be a brilliant read despite the above.
The Main
characters:
Goodman
This is the cop that chases the spy. He is a crafy, well resourced and overall a brilliant
detective. Throughout the duration, Goodman gets to the stage where it's a personal thing to catch Faber (German spy). Does Goodman have the skills to catch the legend "Die Nadel" (The Needle)?
Faber
Yep, you guessed it, this is the spy that is running away from the cop and, well, spying. His
weapon is the
stiletto, he's
quiet, he's
professional and he's
deadly. He's one of those guys that you can look at all day and not remember his face. A
chameleon.
Perfect.
Regretably, I can only describe these two characters without letting the cat out of the bag. There are many brief encounters with other semi-main characters but these are too frequent to be mentioned in sufficient detail. I'll think I'll just stick with the main two.
I'd like to point out to you that Follett has the amazing talent of keeping the pages turning. Reading Eye of the Needle, I found that it was 2am by the time I was forced to put the book down (which is a good sign for the book). Once you get into it you'll have no trouble what-so-ever in finishing it.
Although I enjoyed this book, I think that only someone who is interested in a light read and has a vague interest in spying/espionage would enjoy such a book. But by all means if you want to go and read it, do it. Don't let this review stop you in any way.