The Barnes & Noble Review An Earth-Shattering Read Years ago, Ken Follett established himself as one of the leading writers of espionage fiction with his now-classic The Eye of the Needle. What seemed most refreshing about that book besides the intricate plot and the edge-of-your-seat...
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The Barnes & Noble Review An Earth-Shattering Read Years ago, Ken Follett established himself as one of the leading writers of espionage fiction with his now-classic The Eye of the Needle. What seemed most refreshing about that book besides the intricate plot and the edge-of-your-seat suspense was that the villain was in many ways as fascinating as the heroine. Many Follett novels have come out in the intervening years some terrific, others good but not great but I'm happy to report that he has written what may be his best novel since The Eye of the Needle. In addition to the smooth, lyrical prose (a rarity in thriller fiction), the villain of The Hammer of Eden, a man known as Priest, is one of the most fully realized bad guys in thriller fiction history. Out in the middle of Texas, Priest, who is calling himself Ricky, hitches a ride with a young Mexican-American truck driver named Mario. Mario pines for his beautiful wife and two children back in El Paso, so he works night and day in order to realize his dream for his family's happy future. Priest has other dreams for Mario's future. A truck Mario is slated to drive out of Shiloh, Texas, carries a seismic vibrator a machine that can practically shake oil out of the earth. Priest is leader of a commune in California that has a different use for the vibrator. He will stop at nothing to steal Mario's truck and deliver the prize to his own version of an extended family. After all, when your family's threatened, you have to protect it, right even if it means murder? Priest's commune looks like a peaceable kingdom from the outside. Since the late 1960s, they've been producing wine, eating vegetarian, and living the hippie ideal. But when the government threatened to take away their land in order to develop a power plant, it's a call to action, for
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