Review by Booklist Review
Archer's Clifton Chronicles makes it to the 1970s in the sixth installment. The major players are all here and back to their usual antics: Giles is in danger of losing his political seat once again; Emma is still thwarted by those who wish to see her booted from the Barrington Shipping Company's board; Lady Virginia schemes and seethes; Sebastian remains unlucky in love but supremely lucky in business. Archer knows his formula well, and that's not a bad thing his fans eat it up. And the man can write twists like no other. There are a few missteps in this one, including a random story line introducing a character summarily dispensed with shortly after she appears on the scene, and the saga of Russian author Anatoly Babakov has grown stale by this point, but readers will be eager to get to the latest cliffhanger and will hardly be able to wait for the final volume of the series.--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This sixth, and penultimate, addition to the Clifton Chronicles series (after Mightier Than the Sword) continues with the Cliftons and the Barringtons in the 1970s-their family fortunes and travails, love affairs, political dramas, business mishaps and espionage entanglements. The story begins with a libel trial and a suicide note, bringing embarrassment and consequences for Emma and Harry Clifton, Lady Virginia Fenwick, and Sir Giles Barrington. Sir Giles, in love with an East German translator, risks everything to bring her over the Berlin Wall and to England, but is she smitten or a spy? Meanwhile, Lady Virginia, Sir Giles's ex-wife, is becoming desperate after having been financially cut off by her father. She victimizes a wealthy, gullible American in an outrageous scam, but the victim's wife is on to her. Emma's husband, best-selling author Harry Clifton, uses his photographic memory and oratory skills to help the world recognize a Nobel Prize-winning, imprisoned Russian author. Emma and Harry's son, Sebastian, still has a messy love life which now turns shockingly violent. Archer continues his storytelling magic to create characters of spellbinding substance, and readers can count on his surprising twists and shocking conclusion. Here, just when the end seems too tidy, Archer provides a killer cliffhanger. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Archer (Mightier Than the Sword, 2015, etc.) has great good fun with the sixth volume of his Clifton Chronicles, this one covering the 1970s; his characters move from peril to peril, mostly financial or political, while occasionally straying into territory where bullets fly. That's no worry for Harry Clifton, World War II hero and bestselling author; or Emma, his wife, chief of family-owned Barrington Shipping; or Sebastian, their son and big-time London banker; or Sir Giles Barrington, Emma's brother and Labour politician. Following a short, thorough synopsis, the Clifton-Barringtons move onto new crises, including Harry's impassioned effort to free Russian writer Anatoly Babakova (think Pasternak or Solzhenitsyn) from the Soviet gulag. Barrington Shipping stabilized, the once apolitical Emma meets and admires Margaret Thatcher, inspiring clich"Emma found the atmosphere in the corridors of power electric." Sir Giles rescues his East German lover, but the relationship is haunted by the ghosts of Philby, Burgess, and Maclean. And the villain who simply won't go away, Lady Virginia Fenwick, an utterly corrupt schemer once married to Sir Giles, gets her hooks into a Louisiana cannery heir. Grown-up Sebastian"gone were the rough edges of greed"copes with a stiff upper lip when his bank's new owner, Hakim Bishara, is framed, arrested, and tried, a scheme engineered by "The Unholy Trinity," a group of forgettable villains. After a complicated-turned-tragic love affair with a beautiful young Indian woman, Sebastian has opportunity to reconnect with long-lost American love Samantha thanks to the parent-trap machinations of their superprecocious preteen daughter. Archer spins out dialogue that's spot-on, judging by Downton Abbey or Call the Midwife, and his settings will inspire thoughts about the cost of tickets to London. Another artful Archer telenovela, readable as a stand-alone family drama but more a treat for those captured by the series. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
