Best known for The Pillars of the Earth and the sprawling Kingsbridge series, Ken Follett has sold over 188 million books worldwide.
He is a master of his craft, and leads the historical fiction literary genre – but his favourite-ever book is a lesser-known thriller, miles away from his trademark meticulously researched stories spanning centuries and continents.
Follett was asked to name his all-time favourite book as part of Goodreads’ 10th anniversary celebration, and chose The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, written by Sébastien Japrisot in 1966.
Originally titled La Dame dans l’auto avec des lunettes et un fusil, the novel is a noir-style psychological thriller that tells the story of Dany Longo – a young woman who “borrows” her boss’s car for a spontaneous road trip through the South of France.
She’s nearsighted, fragile, and unsure of what’s real. And as she speeds down the motorway in a stolen Thunderbird, people keep telling her they’ve seen her before, even though she’s never been there.
It’s a tightly wound, hallucinatory story full of shifting identities, mistaken sightings, and suspense. And despite being adapted into films twice – once in 1970 and again in 2015 – it remains outside of the mainstream, known mostly inside literary circles.
Japrisot’s work has long been praised for its precision and tension. The author – often called “the Graham Greene of France” – wrote only a handful of novels, but his influence can still be felt in crime fiction today.
The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun stands out not only for its mysterious plot but also for its unusual protagonist. Dany Longo is an unreliable narrator who can’t quite trust her memory, her instincts, or her surroundings.
For that reason, the book plays with perception, paranoia, and identity, keeping readers guessing until the final pages.
To accompany his top choice, Follett also chose The Man of Property by John Galsworthy, James Bond instalment Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming, Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey and The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot as his top 5 favourite books.
Positions six to ten are occupied by Jean Gimpel’s The Cathedral Builders Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and Eric Ambler’s The Mask of Dimitrios.