CODE TO ZERO

The spymaster's latest thriller fluidly moves between 1941, when a quartet of Harvard students couple and uncouple on the eve of World War II, and 1958, when the group reunites as players in a Cold War espionage case. Follett lays on the techno-details, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to follow the plot, and the dovetailing of soapy love scenes with earthshaking events like Pearl Harbor and the space race lends the book a sense of both intimacy and import. Though artless, his prose is refreshingly unpretentious, and Code to Zero's split-second suspense proves that nearly a quarter century after his breakthrough novel, Eye of the Needle, he's still a hell of a storyteller. B+