Great Reads for Great Readers

 

Never, by Ken Follett.

 

          In a preface to his latest epic tale, Ken Follett tells us that when he was researching ‘Fall of Giants’, the first of a trilogy of novels beginning with the First World War, he was shocked to find that ‘that was a war that nobody wanted.  No European leader on either side intended for it to happen.  But the emperors and prime ministers, one by one, made logical, moderate decisions – each of which took us a small step closer to the most terrible conflict the world had ever known.  I came to believe that it was all a tragic accident.’

            ‘And I wondered:  could that happen again?’

            Which is the premise for ‘Never’, starting in the North African country of Chad in the Sahara desert,  its population impoverished and entirely dependent for their existence on the huge but shrinking Lake that is their Oasis.  Because of Jihadi terrorist activity in the region, the USA and France have secret agents stationed in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital city, and Mr Follett starts the action with several rounds of confrontations between the good guys and the terrorists to set the scene – and no-one does blood and gore better than he, but this is just a preliminary round, for the American President is soon drawn into the fray when it is discovered that the jihadis were using weapons supplied by China:  how did they get them?  Who sold them?  Where did the money come from?

            Questions that don’t receive satisfactory answers, and the situation is compounded by the Supreme Leader of North Korea deciding to rattle a sabre or three by flaunting his possession of missiles with nuclear warheads:  he’s a loose cannon that China definitely doesn’t need as an ally, but fate has added a further complication:  the female president of South Korea has decided it’s her destiny to invade North Korea and unite the Korean people once and for all, ‘before she dies’.  She has the military hardware, backed by the USA, and the single-minded conviction that it is her God-Given right:  how can she fail?

            Mr Follett is an economical, no-frills writer;  he writes short sentences and relies on the reader to form their own mental pictures of his characters, but his research is meticulous and his ratcheting-up of tension throughout this mighty tome (you need strong wrists – 816 pages) is heart-in-the-mouth stuff, especially when we compare our current worrying times with what should be a work of fiction. 

            Nuclear War, coming soon to a place near you.  ( God forbid!)  FOUR STARS.