Ken Follett has written a nuke-blasting blockbuster
“Never” by Ken Follett (Viking, 802 pages, $36).
Welsh novelist Ken Follett has had an extraordinarily successful career. To put his achievements in perspective, he falls somewhere between James Patterson (300 million books in print) and Nicholas Sparks (115 million books in print). In 1974, Follett started off by writing spy novels.
His first major success came in 1978 with “Eye of the Needle” (10 million books in print). In 1989 he published “Pillars of the Earth” (26 million books in print), set during the 12th century, it was his first non-spy novel and first title in his Kingsbridge series. Like Patterson and Sparks, Follett is not slowing down (178 million books in print).
Recently, he returned to his espionage roots by publishing “Never.” This story is set in our present time. It depicts a planet on the verge of a nuclear war. The action swings around the globe, from the White House to the deserts of North Africa and within the walls of the Chinese Communist Party elite.
Pauline Green is the President of the United States. A Republican, Green, along with her counterparts in China, North Korea and South Korea, are the ones who must decide how to respond to the increasing likelihood of full-scale nuclear war.
Follett breaks the book into sections which reflect growing volatility and danger. Each section title indicates the escalation of tensions by DEFCON alerts, the defense readiness conditions of our armed forces. The final level, DEFCON 1, indicates that nuclear warfare has broken out.
In 1962, the United States reached DEFCON 3 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That indicated our Air Force could be ready to fly within 15 minutes. In “Never,” nuclear attacks occur as Pauline Green and her counterpart in South Korea, also a woman, respond to nuclear threats by retaliating with nukes of their own.
There’s a good reason why the author has sold so many books, he’s a masterful storyteller. He writes like he’s conducting a symphony orchestra. He takes us from one movement to the next, building energy and nervous excitement until we reach the climax of all that plot twisting and story creation with his grand finale.
The story lines he intertwines are plentiful. A CIA agent in the African nation of Chad stops a jihadist attack. Who was behind it? The Sudanese? The Chinese? The CIA agent is trying to keep track of an undercover operative who is investigating a ring that is smuggling drugs, and people, across the Libyan desert.
In China, a young spy is tamping down tensions over North and South Korea. A rebellion in North Korea has created a tricky scenario because the rebels have taken possession of nuclear warheads. As missiles begin to cascade over Asia, U.S. President Pauline Green is being goaded by a political rival to respond more aggressively.
The great pleasure in reading Ken Follett’s stories comes from their readability. He writes great big books, and the pages simply fly. After nearly half a century, he’s gotten rather good at his job.