The Man from St. Petersburg

The book was in very good condition.

In many ways, this is vintage Ken Follett. It is fast-paced and keeps you wanting to see what is going to happen next. The writing is good and he does a good job of developing his characters and plot. He also seems to have a good feel for English society in the period immediately before WWI. Despite all this, however, I found myself less than satisfied with the overall result. He gives you Feliks, a Russian anachist and murderer who is on a misguided mission to stop an attempt to negotiate an alliance between Britain and Russia because he is convinced that millions of Russian peasants will die. It never seems to occur to him that the coming war will involve Russia anyway and that millions of peasants will die with or without an alliance. Then Follett tries to make Feliks a sympathetic character. He has been badly wronged in his life. Well, for me, it didn't work. Feliks was still a misguided terrorist bent on murder. Then you get the usual improbabilities: women whose misguided sympathies cause them to let Feliks get closer to his target than he ever would; Feliks miraculously escaping capture despite all odds; and Feliks resorting to a completely improbable tactic at the end. The climax finds Feliks resorting to a tactic that can best be described as using an elephant gun to kill a flea. He needs to flush out the Prince in order to get a shot at him, but Follett would have us accept that Feliks would endanger all that he seems to hold dear in the process. Churchill's action at the end to retrieve the situation was clever plotting, but seemed obvious to me as soon as it was clear what Feliks was going to do. I'm rather thought it would have occurred to Feliks, too. It would have been another good reason to not do what he did.In many ways, "The Man From St. Petersburg" is a good read. For me, though, it asked me to go farther in suspending disbelief than I was prepared to go. The clever ending was a little too clever, and left me somewhat less than satisfied.

This story is set London in early 1914 as Germany was mobilizing and war was inevitable to those that history would prove astute. France was in peril even if England assisted, and the British Empire itself would be at risk if the Germans prevailed. So, The First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill of the Liberal government, armed with a note from King George, convinces The (conservative) Earl of Walden to negotiate a secret treaty with his wife's nephew, Alex Orlov, also nephew to the Czar, for Russia to enter into the fray. The anarchists learn of this plot however, and Feliks, The Man from St. Petersburg, has five pounds sterling and a determination to assassinate Alex Orlov on English soil.This story is rich with the history that bored us in school, that stuff about Victorian pomp and starving Russian peasants floundering for a new political order, the prelude to communism. Follett gives us a sense of the debauchery bred from wealth and privilege, and the desperation born of inhumanities in an era gone by. He introduces us to men threatened by women's suffrage, others terrorized of government, and through them, we better understand why society changed, or perhaps mutated. That stuff is woven seamlessly into a story of intrigue without long speeches or tedious lectures. We get our lesson without having to take notes.My only quarrel is Follett's propensity to interrupt with back-story, once with back-story within back-story if I'm not mistaken. It's a minor irritation though, one scratch and it's gone, because we are more worried about how his characters are going to sort out the mess they're in. And in the end, you're going to believe The Man from St. Petersburg might have been.

I prematurely turn the page and then must retrace my steps to read the missed one or two sentences. Mr. Follett is a blessing for those who value a tight, flawless plot and characters so vividly described that one must consciously (and repeatedly) remind oneself "this is fiction!". Thank you.

Strongly recommended. Important period to understand. Good love story to boot with memorable human touches and emotions..to help define the period.

Follett's second international best-seller was a resounding success but not the juggernaut blockbuster that Eye of the Needle had been four years previously. Nonetheless, it was good enough. This tale is set at the dawn of World War One, when the novel's antagonist/protagonist a Russian anarchist named Feliks Kschessinsky is determined to assassinate one Prince Aleksey Orlov, a Russian admiral who is for the purposes of the storyline a nephew of the real-life Tsar Nicolas II and the fictional Earl of Walden. The Earl's Russian wife the Countess Lydia had once had a premarital affair with Feliks, who was sent to Siberia for the the rest of his natural life while she was forced to make a pre-arranged match with the English nobleman. Feliks escaped from prison many years later, joins an anti-Monarchist anarchist group and makes his way to London when he learns that the young Admiral has brokered a deal to forge an alliance between Russia and Britain should Germany go to war. He also strikes up a friendship with Lydia's susceptible, innocent, but rebellious daughter Lady Charlotte, which is when the plot really gets going. This is a fast-paced story that will satisfy any bookworm although it lacks the spine-tingling suspense that heightened the drama in Eye of the Needle, still considered by many to be Follett's finest.

Como não gostar de uma leitura!

It suddenly struck me that our Ken is not a particularly good writer…… the style smacks of someone merely churning out drivel….. honestly I could do better and I’m no novelist…… so I think this is the last Follett I shall be buying….. maybe I’m too critical but it really is not we’ll written, and I’m ashamed to say that it’s taken me this long to realise it…… shame on me !!!!!

I was enthralled by this book. As with The Eye of the Needle (Follett’s first novel), the author managed to create a main character that you could both love and hate, admire and despise.So many insights were woven into the story. For instance, there is no right or wrong political ideology because our world is full of imperfect people with misguided motivations. We have seen many cases throughout history where the overthrow of one system is simply replaced by a system that introduces a new set of imperfections and corruption.On reading this book, I found is possible to understand and appreciate the reasons for the evolution of both the hard-nosed revolutionary, reacting against the exploitation of the lowest strata of society, and the well-meaning member of the ruling aristocracy, trying to make sense of the social mores of a world that was all he had known.I will forgive Follett his socialist agenda because he explored the minds of his characters so well. There were no heroes and villains – just people who were the product of their flawed circumstances.

ケン・フォレットの作品でもスパイものはあまり好きではないのですが、今回はなかなか良かったです。短編なので描写がどうしてもおざなりで、もう少ししっかりと書き込んでくれたらなとは思いますが…。特に主人公がヒロインと別れてからの劇的な19年間でもう一冊面白い本ができそうです。ケンフォレットの作品にしては珍しくヒステリックで頭の悪い女が出て来てちょっとうんざりしました。全体的にはテンポよく話が進むので読みやすかったです。英語も平易であっという間に読めました。

Ken Follett knows how to write historical fiction and he knows how to write a good thriller. He succeeds once again in combining the two and coming up with a riveting story. The tale is set as the First World War approaches and features two Russians who travel to England with very different agendas. Follett cleverly weaves fact in with fiction and genuine historical characters with his fictional ones. Several points of view are used, and one thing that Follett pushes throughout the novel is how ridiculously mollycoddled and out of touch the upper classes are compared to the desperate plight of the worse off. The story moves along at a good pace and never sags, keeping the reader engaged from start to finish. The only issue I had with the book is that Feliks is portrayed as extremely clever, whilst every other character is as dumb as can be, which of course prolongs things as Follett intended. Still, this aside, it's another winner from a great storyteller.