Code to Zero

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
It's early in 1958. Reeling from the Soviet Union's Sputnik success, the United States struggles desperately to catch up. Thus far, those efforts have resulted in a series of spectacular failures. Now the hopes of a nation, and the future of the U.S. space program, hinge on the successful launch of Explorer I, scheduled to lift off on January 29th.

The odds against a successful launch, however, are even more formidable than anyone anticipated. Technical obstacles were to be expected. Internal problems were not. A Soviet mole, his role until now limited to passing American technology to Moscow, has been instructed to sabotage the launch.

With the future of the free world at stake, only one man can foil the Soviet plan. Unfortunately, with only two days until launch, he doesn't even know about it. That man, you see, has just awakened in a Washington, D.C., subway station, smelling of alcohol -- apparently one of the numerous homeless who have found shelter there. He can't remember who he is or how he got there. Armed with only a single clue -- a fellow traveler addresses him as "Luke" -- he begins a perilous search for his identity, a search that ultimately leads him into direct conflict with a Soviet spy network intent on preventing U.S. entry into space.

Fueled by this intriguing premise, Code to Zero hurtles to its surprising climax with blinding speed, taking readers for a hair-raising ride. Although some may find it a bit melodramatic (perhaps intentionally, Follett's writing style echoes that of novels written during the early days of the space race, and the success of the hero's search often hinges on coincidence and breathtaking, intuitive leaps of logic), most will find Code to Zero an enjoyable read, if only because of Follett's painstaking attention to detail -- he provides copious information about the technical side of the launch, and about the state of psychology at the time -- and the intriguing supporting cast he has assembled. Although Follett is not quite at the top of his form here (look to Eye of the Needle, The Pillars of the Earth, Night over Water, and On Wings of Eagles for that), Code to Zero is head-and-shoulders above most of its current competition. After three decades in the business, Follett knows what buttons to push, and when to push them.

--Hank Wagner

Hank Wagner is a book reviewer for Cemetery Dance magazine and The Overlook Connection.

Bookpage

Follett has made a name for himself by writing taut, well-researched thrillers, and Code to Zero is no exception.

New York Times Book Review

With dependable skill, Follett weaves the threads of his narrative together, tying them into an unexpected and story-resolving knot....

Cleveland Plain Dealer

The premise is vintage Follett.

Style Weekly Magazine

Thriller fans will enjoy this novel set in 1958.

Baltimore Sun

...Follett builds the plot so well, framing it...the result is entertaining....

Los Angeles Times

Ken Follett delivers the surefire suspense readers have come to expect.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Follett is an artist of compelling talents.

From The Critics

You know a novelist is tired when his protagonist suffers from that old soap-opera plot device, amnesia—even if it is caused by the CIA. After rocket scientist Claude Lucas discovers a Soviet plan to blow up a 1958 Cape Canaveral launch, a Russian spy in the CIA administers an incapacitating drug to Lucas instead of killing him, one of several improbabilities. Another: The spy was an old Harvard classmate of Lucas. This information doesn't give away the plot because, in fact, all of the novel's five principals were friends in Cambridge, a very tight best-and-brightest group indeed. To save the rocket, Lucas has to recover his identity, uncover the spy network and make love to the woman he should have married. The stakes just aren't that thrilling, not now. We know who won the space race and the cold war. The characters try to elicit some excitement by speaking urgent movie lines as they get in and out of planes, trains and cars. But Follett is no Le Carré. Almost never does a metaphor, complex sentence or intimate perception beautify Follett's screenplay prose. Like the grand novel of rocketry, Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, this book includes considerable historical and technical detail, but Follett's fifteenth book is slow to get off the ground, lacks throw weight and ends with a thud.
—Tom LeClair

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

HAfter 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 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

With Eye of the Needle and the numerous novels that followed, Follett established himself as a master of the thriller. This latest tale of Cold War espionage is one more bit of evidence. In a narrative that moves smoothly between the World War II years and 1958, when the Soviet Union began the space race by launching Sputnik, Follett reminds us of an almost forgotten time when the very thought of Soviet successes in space terrified us. Scientist and former OSS agent Dr. Claude ("Luke") Lukas knows that something terrible will happen to a coming space launch, but he has been drugged and now suffers from amnesia. What follows is the taut and exciting story of Luke's attempt to find his identity and stop an unknown disaster from occurring. Recommended for all popular fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/00.]--Robert Conroy, Warren, MI Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

From veteran spymeister Follett (The Hammer of Eden, 1998, etc.), the story of a the space race that never gets off the ground. Amnesia is the engine Follett chooses to drive his latest and, not unexpectedly, the worn-out thing sputters. Dr. Luke Lucas, waking up on the cold, hard floor of a public toilet in Union Station, Washington, D.C.—headachy, nauseous, shabbily dressed—wonders how he got there. Well, thereby hangs the tale. It's January 1958, mid—Cold War, and the Soviets have already orbited Sputnik. The Americans, intent on catching up, are set to launch the first US space satellite. Rocket scientist Luke is central to the success of the effort, in part because of his brilliant mathematical mind, but also because he's accidentally stumbled on a plot to keep Explorer I from ever leaving its Cape Canaveral pad. Determined to block Luke's attempt to block their attempt to block a launch, Communist agents have hijacked him and administered memory-robbing drugs, which explains his rude awakening. If that doesn't work, they plan to knock him off him. Why not simply kill him and be done with it? More efficient, true, but a certain strategically placed CIA mole happens to have been Luke's Harvard classmate, and at first he chooses friendship over pragmatism. So, though Luke no longer knows what he knew, the game's afoot as our hero, in hiding, strives to retrieve enough of his memory to figure out why old pals and former lovers are now bent on betrayal, while the desperate Commies seek him here, there, and everywhere. Full of misplaced Cold War nostalgia and dreary, threadbare characters. And really now, amnesia? In this day andage?With a straightface? First printing of 425,000; $400,000 ad/promo; first serial to Reader's Digest; film rights to Columbia Pictures; Book-of-the-Month Club/Literary Guild main selection; TV satellite tour