Ken Follett's
The Pillars of the Earth impressed me enough that I decided to try one of his earlier suspense novels, specifically
The Third Twin. The title caught my attention—as did most of the story. Most of? Yep. Just most of. While I was trying to figure out what had happened years ago that led to the book's present that involved one suspected rapist, one murderer and one nice guy who are all identical, I was hooked. Once the mystery was solved though, the book turned into: will the good guys stop the bad guys in time to prevent even more bad things from happening? Since I never had any doubt that the good guys would win, the last hundred pages were pretty dull. I don't remember
Pillars as turning tedious, and memory says that Follett kept piling on unexpected-but-believable events until the last few pages.
I will give him one scene in
Twin where he presented the essence of a few characters in an extremely clever way—IMHO. One of the point-of-view characters introduces herself to a guard at a prison.
"I'm Dr. Jean Ferrami from Jones Falls University."
"How are you, Jean?"
Temoigne was obviously the type of man who found it hard to call a woman by her surname. Jeannie deliberately did not tell him Lisa's first name. "And this is my assistant, Ms. Hoxton."
"Hi, honey." (page 129)
In those two words, Follett sums up all you need to know about Temoigne. Wow!
And I have a question. There's a reference to the size of the parking lot at the Pentagon: "In the Midwest there were
towns (italics his) smaller than the Pentagon parking lot." (page 359) I don't know. Never been there. Has anyone? How much of an exaggeration is it?
Bottom line is now that I've sampled one of Follett's older books, I'm happy forget about him and wait for the sequel to
Pillars to come out in paperback. What's the title?
World Without End? I'm leery that I'm going to start it with the phrase book-without-end firmly embedded in my mind. I realize no good can come of that.
