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Jackdaws
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

Jackdaws Unknown - 2001

by Ken Follett


About this book

D-Day is approaching. They don’t know where or when, but the Germans know it'll be soon, and for Felicity “Flick” Clariet, the stakes have never been higher. A senior agent in the ranks of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) responsible for sabotage, Flick has survived to become one of Britain’s most effective operatives in Northern France. She knows that the Germans’ ability to thwart the Allied attack depends upon their lines of communications, and in the days before the invasion no target is of greater strategic importance than the largest telephone exchange in Europe.


But when Flick and her Resistance-leader husband try a direct, head-on assault that goes horribly wrong, her world turns upside down. Her group destroyed, her husband missing, her superiors unsure of her, her own confidence badly shaken, she has one last chance at the target, but the challenge, once daunting, is now near impossible. The new plan requires an all-woman team, none of them professionals, to be assembled and trained within days. Code-named the Jackdaws, they will attempt to infiltrate the exchange under the noses of the Germans—but the Germans are waiting for them now and have plans of their own. There are secrets Flick does not know—secrets within the German ranks, secrets among her hastily recruited team, secrets among those she trusts the most. And as the hours tick down to the point of no return, most daunting of all, there are secrets within herself. 

-Penguin Random House Review


From the publisher

Picture the Dirty Dozen as six women, operating behind Nazi lines, and you'll have the premise of this propulsive thriller. Felicity "Flick" Clairet is an officer in the British Special Operations Executive, responsible for crippling German communications before D-Day. Her first plan to destroy a German telephone exchange fails. Her backup "Hail Mary" plan must be carried out immediately. For it, she must recruit from the cream of SOE rejects, a shooting aristocrat, and the odd prisoner or two. Eventually, she assembles a team of six, including two lesbians and a German transvestite. They must infiltrate the exchange as cleaning women, and dismantle it in six hours. To add to the difficulty, the Germans are waiting for them...

First Edition Identification

Macmillan published a First UK Edition, First Printed hardcover in London, 2001. 


Dutton published a First US Edition, First Printed hardcover in New York, 2001.



Details

  • Title Jackdaws
  • Author Ken Follett
  • Binding unknown
  • Date 2001-01
  • ISBN 9780736684569

About the author

Ken Follett burst into the book world with Eye of the Needle, an award-winning thriller and international bestseller. After several more successful thrillers, he surprised everyone with The Pillars of the Earth and its long-awaited sequel, World Without End, a national and international bestseller. Follett's new, magnificent historical epic, the Century Trilogy, includes the bestselling Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, and Edge of Eternity. He lives in England with his wife, Barbara.