Cometh the Hour (Clifton Chronicles Series #6)

by Jeffrey Archer

Overview

Cometh the Hour is the penultimate book in the Clifton Chronicles and, like the previous novels - all of which hit the New York Times bestseller list - showcases Jeffrey Archer's extraordinary storytelling with his trademark twists.

It opens with the reading of a suicide note, which has devastating consequences for Harry and Emma Clifton, Giles Barrington and Lady Virginia. Giles must decide if he should withdraw from politics and try to rescue Karin, the woman he loves, from behind the Iron Curtain. But is Karin truly in love with him, or is she a spy?

Lady Virginia is facing bankruptcy, and can see no way out of her financial problems, until she is introduced to the hapless Cyrus T. Grant III from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who's in England to see his horse run at Royal Ascot.

Sebastian Clifton is now the Chief Executive of Farthings Bank and a workaholic, whose personal life is thrown into disarray when he falls for Priya, a beautiful Indian girl. But her parents have already chosen the man she is going to marry. Meanwhile, Sebastian's rivals Adrian Sloane and Desmond Mellor are still plotting to bring him and his chairman Hakim Bishara down, so they can take over Farthings.

Harry Clifton remains determined to get Anatoly Babakov released from a gulag in Siberia, following the international success of his acclaimed book, Uncle Joe. But then something unexpected happens that none of them could have anticipated.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250091789
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/09/2016
Series:	Clifton Chronicles Series , #6
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

JEFFREY ARCHER was educated at Oxford University. He served five years as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons and has served twenty-seven years as a Member of the House of Lords. Now published in 97 countries and more than 37 languages, all of his novels and short story collections—including Kane & Abel, Only Time Will Tell and This Was a Man—have been international bestsellers. Jeffrey is married with two sons and three grandchildren, and lives in London, Cambridge and Majorca.

Hometown:

London and the Old Vicarage, Grantchester

Date of Birth:

April 15, 1940

Education:

Attended Brasenose College, Oxford, 1963-66. Received a diploma in sports education from Oxford Institute

Editorial Reviews

Archer packs a plot with thrills and chills enough for readers to keep turning the pages, saying, What's gonna happen next?...The conclusion's a turbo-charged cliffhanger that'll have fans screaming Arrrcherr!” —Kirkus Reviews on Mightier Than the Sword

“[The Sins of the Father] will keep your blood pressure high and you’ll risk back injury just from being kept on the edge of your seat…I guarantee that anyone who takes this book from the shelves will not be able to put it down.” —The Spectator (UK)

“Archer knows how to dole out tiny crumbs of suspense right up to the last page, which ends with…a really excellent cliffhanger.” —The Washington Post

From the Publisher

2016-01-10
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 cliché—"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.

Kirkus Reviews