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Ken Follett isn’t one of my favorite authors, but he’s a guy whose work I will occasionally pick up, as his books — thrillers, mostly — are invariably competently written, with quick-moving plots and decent characters. Generally his works are set amidst the backdrop of historical events, and are much of the time inspired by little-known facets of the histories.

Such is the case with Jackdaws, a thriller set in World War II that involves a team of female saboteurs whose mission is to destroy a secret German telephone exchange in France, thus bollixing Nazi communications as the Allied invasion, rumored but still secret, takes place. Meanwhile, a ruthless Nazi agent who is bent on destroying the French resistance catches wind of something going on, and thus the book alternates between the progress of the all-female team and that of the Nazi agent. It’s a fairly tightly-written book, and I enjoyed it as such. I did have a few complaints: a lot of the “female team” chapters are devoted to the team’s formation, so there isn’t as much action-in-the-field as I would like, and thus the level of actual intrigue in the book is less than I would hope. The main character is a woman named Felicity, which is a fine name; unfortunately, she goes by the nickname “Flick”, which is the name Follett uses almost exclusively in referring to her. “Flick” just isn’t a name that helps cast the spell of a superior intelligence operative. (Imagine if Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca had been named “Clarence”, instead of “Rick”. “Everybody comes to Clarence’s” just doesn’t do it.) And finally, I would have liked to have seen more about the French resistance itself.

The strongest parts of the book, strangely, are the ones focusing on the German agent; he’s the most developed character and the most interesting — which is disturbing, given his skill at torture. He comes up with some means of torture that are fascinating for their psychological impact. It’s not all about bamboo-shoots under the fingernails; he comes up with one way to torture a sweet little old lady that is devilish and monstrous, and it involves never laying a finger upon her.

Jackdaws isn’t the best Ken Follett novel I’ve read, but it’s pretty good.