Code to Zero - Hardcover

Follett, Ken

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525945636 ISBN 13: 9780525945635

Publisher: Dutton Adult, 2000

Synopsis

Waking up in a railway station in 1958 with total amnesia, Luke Lucas begins to relearn his identity and realizes that his fate, as well as those of his wife, his best friend, and a woman he once loved, are connected to America's Explorer I space rocket.

About this title

About the Author

Ken Follett first thrilled readers with the classic suspense novel Eye of the Needle. In the next twenty years he topped bestseller lists again and again with his unique blend of powerful storytelling, well-drawn characters, and authentic detail in such books as The Third Twin and the worldwide bestseller The Pillars of the Earth.

Reviews

After dabbling in his last few books in historical sagas and various thriller subgenres, Follett returns to his espionage roots with this absorbing, tightly plotted Cold War tale about skullduggery in the early days of the space race. Set in 1958 shortly after the Soviets beat the Americans into orbit, the story tracks the frantic movements of Dr. Claude Lucas, who wakes up one morning in Washington, D.C.'s Union Station, dressed as a bum. A victim of amnesia, he has no recollection that he is a key player in the upcoming launch of Explorer 1, the army's latest attempt to get a rocket into space. While Lucas slowly unravels the clues to his identity, the CIA follows its own agenda. The agency, led by Lucas's old Harvard buddy Anthony Carroll, has its own murky reasons for wanting Lucas to remain amnesic, and will kill him if he tries to interfere with the launch. Follett (The Hammer of Eden) does a wonderful job of keeping readers guessing about Lucas; is he a spy trying to foil the launch, as the CIA apparently believes? From the nation's capital to Alabama and Cape Canaveral, Lucas manages to stay one step ahead of his pursuers, steadily learning more about his memory loss, his wife, Elspeth, and his college friends Carroll, Billie Josephson and Bern Rothsten. Suspense junkies won't be disappointed by Follett's man-on-the-run framework; tension courses through the book from start to finish. Yet where the story shines is in the chemistry between Lucas and the four other major characters. As told through a series of well-chosen flashbacks, all the old college chums are now working or have worked as spies. The dilemma, skillfully posed by Follett, is figuring out who's friend and who's foe. (Dec. 4) Forecast: In his first hardcover for Dutton, Follett is wise to return to his forte of espionage thriller, and to base this novel on a real event, the unexplained delay of the 1958 Explorer 1 launch. Given the promotional hooplaDwhich includes a 425,000 first printing and $400,000 ad/promoDplus first serial to Reader's Digest; status as a BOMC, Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selection; simultaneous audios from Penguin Audio; and the sale of movie rights to Columbia Pictures, this book has a good chance of dancing with the charts.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Follett has written a string of best-selling thrillers over the past 20 years, but none of them has matched the electricity of his breakthrough novel, Eye of the Needle (1978). His latest, however, may change that. As with Needle, this cold-war thriller uses a time-driven espionage plot to generate remarkable tension. The plot hinges on the activities of four former Harvard classmates, one of whom, Claude "Luke" Lucas, is a scientist working on the launch of the first American satellite, Explorer I, in 1958. With Sputnik safely in orbit, the Russians hope to sabotage the American launch and take control of the space race. When Luke wakes up in a toilet in Washington's Union Station with autobiographical memory loss, it's clear the game is afoot; will he be able to reconstruct his identity in time to figure out who's behind the Russian plot and save the launch, scheduled for that same night? As the story unfolds, Follett jumps between the present, January 1958, and December 1941, when Luke and his Harvard friends were about to be swept up in the maelstrom of World War II. Follett's strength as a writer has always been plot over characters; his people are alive enough not to undermine our commitment to the story, but, finally, they take a backseat to the tumult of the action. Don't look for ambiguity here, or for le Carre's specialty, espionage as metaphor for the problem of identity, but frankly, as the launch clock ticks down to zero, you won't be thinking about identity. A classic page-turner on a classic theme: cold-war skulduggery. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Explorer I is about to blast off at Cape Canaveral, ready to challenge Sputnik in space, and Luke Lucas finds himself lying on the ground in a train station. He doesn't remember who he is, but he does know a terrible secret that could affect blast-offDand peace in the time of Cold War. Sounds like a classic Follett thriller.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dutton Adult
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0525945636
• ISBN 13: 9780525945635
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368