Jeffrey Archer is a menace. His books should be pulped and an Act of Parliament passed to ban their sale. They are the Maltesers of publishing. Once you’ve started one you can’t finish until you’ve scoffed the whole lot.
And that can be very troubling. I missed stations, was late for meetings and kept the wife awake reading his last book, Only Time will Tell. The new sequel, The Sins of the Father, is no exception. It will keep your blood pressure high and you’ll risk back injury just from being kept on the edge of your seat.
You may recall that, when I reviewed Only Time Will Tell, I revealed it finished on a spectacular twist of plot. Our hero, blown up at sea by the Germans, thinks it would be a cunning plan to take a dead colleague’s identity, only to land in New York and be arrested for murder. He’d chosen the wrong guy.
Of course, he is innocent but corrupt lawyer Sefton Jelks (who is so crooked that if he swallowed a nail he’d pass a corkscrew), wicked prison wardens and the Nazis cause him one or two scalp-tingling adventures.
This is a novel in itself. But, oh no, Archer has to be greedy. There are at least three other subplots going on.
Our hero can’t marry the mother of his child because she might be his sister. His mother, Maisie, has tale too: she’s forced into prostitution because of her former lover, the evil Sir Hugo Barrington, who could be her son’s father, which could lead to problems of inheritance.
I have no doubt that Sir Hugo will go down as one of literature’s great villains. He oozes menace, spits venom and is a bully and a coward. No slight is too small to inspire horrible revenge, whether it’s a sound thrashing, forced bankruptcy or murder.
If Sins of the Father is made into a movie (as I hope it will be) actors will be queuing up to portray this loathsome creature.
And, just when you think a plotline is about to reach a predictable conclusion, Archer shows you you really haven’t a clue how it will be resolved.
And the final chapter? Well, I won’t spoil it, but most of the cast arrive in the House of Lords for a cliff-hanger paternity debate.
Now, I know some of you turn your noses up at the mere thought of picking up, let alone reading, a Jeffrey Archer novel. Well, I have no sympathy: it’s your loss.
I guarantee that anyone who takes this book from the shelves will not be able to put it down.
The Sins of the Father is published on 15th March.
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