VOLUME five of Sir Jeffrey Archer’s Clifton Chronicles series, Mightier than the Sword, manages simultaneously to be a segment of a sprawling family saga, as well as a well-plotted thriller. Readers will find that the book stands well enough on its own, although die-hard Archer fans will consider it something of a sacrilege to dip into this without perusing the preceding four books in detail. The title refers to Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s famous quote regarding “the pen being mightier than the sword”. This ties in with the crux of the novel which involves protagonist Harry Clifton chasing a banned book about Josef Stalin’s life all the way to communist Russia — the action of Archer’s novel spans the mid to late 1960s.

The time period in which the book is set comes with its own distinct set of advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, both the audience and Archer are blessedly undistracted by modern-day weaponry, political issues, and technology. On the other, however, setting a spy novel almost 50 years ago risks boring many readers who may be interested in fast-paced entertainment as opposed to a quasi-period piece. Had an upcoming novelist made this move, it is safe to assume that the book would hardly have reached bestselling status.

However, given that Archer established himself long ago as the maestro behind tightly-paced thrillers such as Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, not to mention delightfully engaging collections of short stories like Cat o’Nine Tails, this concern does not impede his authorial agenda. The latter text arose from actual time the author spent in prison, where he soaked up the real, though improbable, stories of other inmates, proving beyond a doubt that truth is stranger than fiction.

Like all sound family sagas the book needs to devote time to the independent stories of all its central characters, including Harry’s wife Emma (who chairs the wealthy Barrington Corporation board) and his talented, albeit erratic, son Sebastian. Particularly engaging is the manner in which Emma’s brother, Giles, pursues his candidacy in a local election in order to be re-elected member of parliament. There is an intrinsic ‘Britishness’ about all of Archer’s major works, and the Clifton Chronicles are no exceptions. Equally intriguing are the machinations of a Queen’s Counsel lawsuit for libel brought against Emma by none other than her beautiful and obnoxious former sister-in-law, Lady Virginia Fairfax. Ultimately, though it would be reductive to label it as such, this is little more than an upper-crust, courtroom catfight, but then it is moments such as these that make Archer’s reading fun as well as escapist.

Sebastian has his heart set on marrying an American curator, but her idealism clashes with his determined desire to climb up the greasy pole of corporate banking. In a manner that is both trite as well as oddly satisfying, Archer creates an unsavoury villain, Adrian Sloane, an unethical investment banker who appears to delight less in his ill-gotten bonuses than in being Sebastian’s nemesis. We are all rather relieved when Sebastian ends up becoming Sloane’s nemesis instead. The plot thickens when Sebastian’s banking concerns become linked to internecine Barrington board politics.

A few clever twists and turns of the plot result in all the bad guys receiving their just deserts, but not before the good guys make a few rather costly mistakes. Sebastian’s trump card is his association with a wealthy international banker of Turkish blood, who justifiably capitalises on the frequent rate at which many xenophobic Englishmen undermine him. Though Sebastian makes a number of personal and professional mistakes, he fortunately does not err on this score. In spite of the fact that the action takes place in the ’60s, the above-mentioned point forcibly reminds one of Egyptian-born Mohamed Al Fayed’s financial hold over Harrods in the ’90s.

A strange romantic streak underlies much of Archer’s writing, and may go a long way towards explaining the popular influence his works exert on our imagination. Giles tosses away a fairly sound marriage when he falls in love with a Titian-haired beauty from East Berlin, Sebastian hunts down his former fiancée until he discovers a secret she has been keeping from him for half a dozen years, and in one of the book’s more poignant scenes, Harry visits the wife of Anatoly Babakov — the ill-fated Russian interpreter who wrote the banned book on Stalin. Mrs Babakov defected to the US when her husband was detained in Russia, but was left virtually penniless. Since Harry is an author with considerable clout, he persuades his formidable publisher Harold Guinzberg to pay the woman a substantial amount of money to publish the book — the single stumbling block being that only one copy exists, hidden by Mrs Babakov in Leningrad. Harry considers it his moral duty to track down the extant copy, and while I will refrain from giving away more of the plot at this stage, it should be noted that like Steve Berry’s detective Cotton Malone, Harry possesses an eidetic memory that comes in very handy when least expected.

The action of the novel does take place on an international stage, though most of it is set in Britain, but is not encumbered by the frenetic pace of 21st-century spy fiction, where the most major unsung heroes are generally overworked border customs officials. Harry’s two trips to Russia are both memorable and come across as quite authentic, whereas Giles’s experience of East Berlin politics is far more intriguing than his rather gratuitous affaire de coeur.

At times the diffuse nature of a family saga clashes with the pace of Harry’s narrative, but such hiccups are to be expected when it comes to long drawn-out tales that can ultimately only be enjoyed in their entirety. Those wishing to get an introductory taste of Archer’s oeuvre will be better served beginning with one of his stand-alone novels, but committed fans will be appreciative of the tantalising Scheherazade fashion in which he leaves the action on the last page deliberately unfinished. One is expected to hunger for more, because that is precisely what a seasoned writer like Archer wishes us to do.

Mightier than the Sword

(THRILLER)

By Jeffrey Archer

St. Martin’s Press, US

ISBN 978-1250079022

416pp.