Intriguing tales and trademark twists

In the penultimate book of Clifton Chronicles, ‘Cometh the Hour’, Jeffrey Archer narrates the life of Cliftons in the 70s. However, the question here is, should the series have ended with five instead of seven books?

Jeffrey Archer, who was in the city about a year ago to launch the fifth book of the Clifton Chronicles, ‘Mightier than Sword’ said to me, “Harry is me and Emma is my wife” during an exclusive interview. In the penultimate book of the series, ‘Cometh the Hour’, which was released a couple of weeks ago, Harry Clifton the main protagonist, narrates an incident while promoting his new book in the US. This is reminiscent of an incident in Archer’s life, which he shared during his the interview. In ‘Cometh the Hour’ every Archer aficionado gets to see the parallels between Archer and Harry Clifton.

Archer had fun, so will his readers, as the characters in the book move from one peril to another, mostly financial and occasionally political. Set in the 70s, the Clifton and Barrington families travel through; fortunes and travails, love affair gone bad, espionage drama, corporate politics and politics.

While Emma walks free from the law suit filed by Lady Virginia Fenwick; it marks the end of political career for Giles Barrington (her brother). Giles, a known womaniser pulls all stops to rescue Karina, an East German translator, who was supposedly smitten by him. However, there is more to Karina and as we sift through the pages, a rather sinister plot comes through, where it is suspected that Karina is in fact a Stasi spy.

Life doesn’t go well for Virginia as well; after her father cuts out financial support, she traps a gullible wealthy American in an outrageous scam but, it backfires. Harry’s chronicles of rescuing Babakov, an exile Russian author, draws parallels to the life of the author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

The most troubled character in the book is Sebastian. Not only he battles office politics, but his love life too is in disarray. During his visit to New Delhi, he falls in love with an Indian girl – Priya. However, least known to him, her parents had already chosen a groom and she can’t defy her parents. Sebastian's rivals Adrian Sloane and Desmond Mellor are still plotting to bring him and his chairman Hakim Bishara down, so that they can take over Farthings.

While the Cliftons and Barringtons try to wade out from their troubles and all is tidy, an unexpected twist puts their lives in panic. Like all his books in the series, Archer ends the book at a cliffhanger.Archer is a good story teller and the multiple narrative of the book keeps you yearning for more. On the hindsight, it is safe to say that the book doesn’t provide anything more than the typical twists, which had been the author’s trademark.

While the style and the pace of the narrative keeps you glued to the book, one can occasionally gets to feel that ‘This sounds so similar’ and that nagging doubt - ‘I have read something similar in one of his previous books’ – does not leave. As Archer admitted in the interview, he wanted the series to end with five books, but couldn’t kill all characters and hence two more books were in the offing.

If he would have finished the series with five books, it would have been one of the best gripping saga-series in the recent times, but two more books feels like he dragged on it beyond needful. Nevertheless, the sixth one in the series does seem to have laid foundation for what one hopes to be a kickass saga finale.