Customer Reviews

The Big Needle

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This work isn't exactly trash, it's a very 1970's morality story with an unlike, almost anti-hero behaving very much like a Swinging London jet-setter. It follows the 70's fashion/sexuaity formula with Mr. Follet's usual characters. Very similar to "The Executioner," By Don Pendleton, the book that defined the action/adventure genre, this book is more a reflection of the era than a bad work of fiction. While it deserve no awards, it isn't trash either.

This is evidently one of the first books ever written by Follett. The plot is banal, the characters are built very superficially. It's worth reading only if you are a young writer in need of encouragement - it shows a youthful, unsuccessful effort by an author who grew later on to be a really good writer.

However, if you read it expecting the high quality of other books by Follett, you will be frustrated.

This was the first book I had read by Ken Follett, but since I have also read the Modigliani Scandal. He keeps the reader so interested with the action, fast turns and dramatics that it is hard to put the book down when you get tired. I enjoyed this book very much and I hope to get an opportunity to read more of this talented authors' work in the future.

This was either obviously an early novel of Follet's or his pipe dreams of menage a trois. The plot is ridiculous and the characters shallow. I have read others of yours Mr. Follett, I am glad you have improved.

The Big Needle by Ken Follet is a short action-adventure novel which aspires to nothing loftier than providing escapist fare. In that regard, it has a lot in common with the earlier work of Jack Higgins.
The protagonist and first person narrator is a rich, swinging Londoner answering to the name "Apples" Carstairs who decides to exact revenge on the drug kingpin he holds responsible for getting his teenage daughter hooked on heroin. There's plenty of fast paced action as Carstairs goes about carrying out his rather unlikely plan.
By and large, the characters are poorly fleshed out and the plot is more than somewhat implausible. No one is likely to mistake The Big Needle for great literature but it is entertaining in a superficial, guilty pleasure sort of way. A three star effort. No more, no less.

This book leads me to believe that Ken Follett somehow gets off on black women getting gang raped. It certainly happened enough times in this book!