The key to Rebecca

Ken Follet
New American Library, 1980

"The last camel collapsed at noon." That's the way this cloak-and-dagger book starts. Catching you from the very first moment. There is no doubt why this novel turned his author into one of the most famous bestsellers writter: it is a well built story set in the Second World War at Egypt, in which sex, action and intrigue are mixed up in proper portions to get the secret potion every bestseller writter looks for to trap readers like in a spiderweb. A simple task? To make things simple is the hardest stuff. And Follet is one of the most brilliant writter in that matter. Beyond the deep investigating work on historic details, battles of the North African campaign, troop movements, Rommel´s tactics, weapons and uniforms wore by both armies, he managed to give every caracter of his story a lifelike touch, so everything seems to happen just in front of you. The atmosphere of  Cairo at that time, with its narrow streets, cafés, british patrolls, street vendors, beggars and night clubs, is specilly very well outlined. But as it happens to me with most thriller books, all the great values shown by the author in the begining of the book, slightly vanish as the story goes on. As if it was easier to think up a good story than to finish it. The ends of these books use to don´t live up to the created expectations. Suddenly, at some point of the book, later the more skillful the writter is, magic dissapears, and you begin to see the action from distance, the reader doesn´t live inside the story anymore and everything, characters and plot, seems to have been seen thousands of times before. And you end up thinking, how he did it? How he trapped me that way? As when lights are switched on in the theater when magician show has ended.