A Prisoner of Birth, Jeffrey Archer, 2008, St. Martin's Press, Genre: Fiction. 501 pages. Finished 11/13/12.
Paths of Glory, Jeffrey Archer, 2009, St. Martin's Press, Genre: Fictionalized Biography. 372 pages. Finished 11/21/12.
To Cut a Long Story Short, Jeffrey Archer, 2000, HarperCollins, Genre: Collected Short Fiction. 271 pages. Finished 11/24/12.
LesOpinion: I don't care what the other critics say, Jeffrey Archer is not a "storyteller in the class of Alexandre Dumas." Also, he isn't "one of the top ten storytellers in the world." Who pays these people, anyway?
If you're going to slog through pop fiction, you can do worse. But the legal thrillers aren't on par with John Grisham, the spy thrillers don't hold a candle to John LeCarre, and the high finance romps don't even measure up to the remarkably mediocre David Baldacci. So if you're going to read popular fiction, don't waste time on Archer when there are so many other, more productive ways to waste your time.
The final book in my Archer Slog was the collected short fiction. These works proved that 1) Archer's work is formulaic; and 2) anything he has written that lasts longer than 20 pages shouldn't.
Circumstances under which I recommend these books: There are no other books to read, anywhere.
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