Eye of the Needle

The Eye of the Needle is an espionage thriller by best-selling author Ken Follett. Originally published in 1978 under the title, Storm Island, the novel follows the hunt for German spy and assassin Henry Faber. Faber has obtained information that will influence Adolf Hitler’s decision on whether to send reinforcements to Erwin Rommell’s army in Normandy in anticipation of a joint British and American attack. The Eye of the Needle is Ken Follett’s first commercially successful novel and won the 1979 Edgar Award for Best Novel. In 1981, the novel was made into a major motion picture starring Donald Sutherland.

This guide uses the Kindle e-book edition published by Penguin Books Random House LLC.

Plot Summary

Henry Faber is in his locked boarding house bedroom when his landlady, Mrs. Garden, lets herself in to ask him to turn down his radio. Faber is transmitting a message to his German handlers and kills Mrs. Garden with a stiletto knife to keep her from exposing him. He makes the murder look like a sexual assault.

Percival “Percy” Godliman, a widowed history professor, is recruited by his uncle, Colonel Andrew Terry, to work with British military intelligence (MI5) to help catch German spies. Terry explains to Percy that German spies are being recruited and trained so quickly that they make mistakes. MI5 has been successful in catching many of the German spies and has turned some of them into double agents in order to send false information to Germany. However, MI5 has stumbled across another spy who appears to be more intelligent and careful than the others and whose existence could undermine its false information program.

Lucy and David Rose get married the day before David is supposed to be deployed as a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot. On the night of the wedding, they are in a car accident and David loses both of his legs. They move to Storm Island, a tiny island off the eastern coast of Scotland. Lucy learns she is pregnant shortly after their arrival despite the fact that David is no longer interested in marital relations. Lucy is unhappy in her marriage but decides she must stay with David in order to give the marriage a fair chance.

Faber receives a code instructing him to make a rendezvous with a German agent, but he is reluctant to do so because the code is old, and he lacks faith in the agent’s professionalism. Faber observes the agent at the rendezvous and sees he is being followed by a British police officer. Rather than contact the man immediately, Faber follows him to his boarding house. The man tells Faber he is to investigate information that General George Patton’s First United States Army Group (FUSAG) is gathering in East Anglia to prepare for an invasion in Pas de Calais, France. Faber is then instructed to rendezvous with a U-boat off the eastern coast of Scotland. Faber kills the agent with is stiletto before leaving.

Percy and his partner, Frederick Bloggs, have had a German agent they call Blondie under observation, waiting to see if he makes contact with another agent. When Blondie is found dead in his boarding house, Bloggs and Percy search unsolved murder cases to find a similar case. They stumble on Mrs. Garden’s murder. They contact a young tenant who lived in the same boarding house at the time and have him look at pictures, hoping to identify Blondie’s killer. The man is successful in identifying several pictures of Faber.

Faber investigates Patton’s army, stationed in Kent and Sussex, only to discover that the army is fake—part of a deception strategy intended to mislead German commanders as to the location and timing of the coming attack. He takes photographs and returns to London to develop them. Faber sends copies of the pictures to a German double spy in the Portuguese Embassy, but the pictures are intercepted. Percy and Bloggs trace Faber through the delivery of these pictures to a train going to Liverpool. They place the young tenant on the train to identify Faber, but Faber recognizes the young man and kills him. When the train stops at the next station, he recognizes Bloggs as the man who was following Blondie in London. He hides in the coal tender until he can safely disembark near a remote village. Faber steals a bicycle, then breaks into a house and steals a car.

Bloggs and Percy learn of the car theft. They learn the car was abandoned when it broke down, then learn that the thief, presumed to be Faber, got a ride with a magistrate to Aberdeen. In Aberdeen, Percy and Bloggs trace Faber to the theft of a boat. Unfortunately, a storm has settled over the coast of Scotland. Percy and Bloggs believe Faber might have died in a shipwreck, but Percy reviews a map and finds Storm Island, coming to believe Faber likely wrecked there.

Lucy is shocked when a stranger shows up on her doorstep. She and David welcome the man into their home and offer him a place to recover from his shipwreck. Lucy is attracted to the stranger and shares his bed, then feels mortified when David figures out what she has done. David discovers the film negatives in Faber’s jacket pocket and confronts him. They fight, and Faber kills David. He also kills the shepherd living on the other side of the island. Lucy finds David’s body and plots her escape from Faber. She flees to the other side of the island. Faber breaks into the cottage and attempts to contact the U-boat he was to rendezvous with, but Lucy shorts the electricity in the cottage. Faber spots the U-boat in the harbor and attempts to reach it, but Lucy throws a rock at him as he climbs down the cliff, and he falls to his death. The Allies send false information to Hitler, pretending to be Faber telling him the invasion will take place at Pas de Calais. Bloggs and Lucy later marry and raise her and David’s son Jo together.