Rene L. MauriceCritiques

Eine Nachbetrachtung vom mutmaßlich größten Bankeinbruch aller Zeiten in Nizza.

A bit disappointing. I expected more of a dramatization of the story in the vein of historical fiction. What it read like was a book-length investigative journalism piece. Interesting, but not terribly dramatic.

This has been sitting on my bookshelf for quite a while, and until I picked it up to read, I never realized it was non-fiction.

I can’t say that the book is particularly exciting, and I’m not sure how much of that is actually attributable to Follett. I believe much of the story is translated from an earlier French work (see his take on it at http://ken-follett.com/bibliography/the_heist_of_the_century/ — he even tried to prevent it from being published!). But though the storytelling isn’t very compelling, I found that the circumstances of the robbery were. It really was quite an ingenious plan, and if everyone involved was as smart as Spaggiari, they probably would have gotten away with it completely.

While the story itself seems like it ought to be fairly interesting, this telling of it is simply quite dull, and adds up to nothing. Not nearly as good as, say, Crichton's The Great Train Robbery.

En "faktaroman" om en av historiens största bankrån, då det exklusiva Société Générale i Nice blev av med omkring 100 miljoner francs. Boken är snarare ett sliskigt journalistisk grävande i händelsen, varvat med en slags dramatiseringar av delar av rånet (det är väl här Ken Follett kom in i bilden).
Uförandet av själva rånet är fascinerande i sig, men författarnas ton är ofta nedlåtande och drypande av fördomar i sämsta kvällstidningsstil. Beundrare av Follett kan med fördel undvika detta lågvattenmärke från hans tidiga karriär (1978).

Pretty good and well written but another quick read.