13 Jul Jackdaws

Jackdaws, WWII book by Ken Follett

(2001) Best-selling British author Ken Follett writes about an all-female team of British SOE agents who parachute into France right before D-Day in order to sabotage a German telephone exchange.

The author explains that the British sent fifty women into occupied France during World War II.  At least thirteen of them were captured and tortured. The women were very effective agents because they could get around more easily than a man  without attracting attention. After all, the young men should have been fighting or working in labor camps.

Whenever I am in the car, I always have an audio book so I listened to Jackdaws rather than read it.  I did have to skip through a couple of sections when the Gestapo was torturing members of the Resistance. Other parts of were so stressful that I had to turn the story off for a while.

I was impressed with the research the author had done. Some of the details became a little bit tedious … again, when you’re reading a book you can take in a page quickly. When you’re listening, you pretty much have to take in every word.

Also, by the end I had the feeling that if this were turned into a movie only Angelina Jolie could play the heroine. She was just a little bit too superhuman, a la Salt or The Tourist.

You probably can’t go wrong with anything by Ken Follett.  I’ve known of him since I watched the movie Eye of a Needle years ago.  The stories about WWII France always interest me so this turned out to be an excellent read, or I should say… listen.
Jackdaws at amazon.com

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