Ken Follett began his career as a fiction writer while working for the London Evening News. He produced a series of mysteries and thrillers (two for children) under various pseudonyms until he felt he had learned enough and written well enough to author under his own name. His early works are, as he told DLB Yearbook 1981 (1982), intentionally "very racy, with a lot of sex," but by writing them Follett gained the skill to write the novels which have made his fame and fortune: Storm Island (1978; published in the United States as Eye of the Needle ), Triple (1979), The Key to Rebecca (1980), and The Man from St. Petersburg (1982). Robert Lekachman ( Nation, 26 April 1980) aptly designates Follett's forte as "the variation upon history," and Michael Demarest (Time, 3 May 1982) labels him "an expert in the art of ransacking history for thrills," for each of his best works grows out of news stories and historical events.
