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Honour Amongst Thieves - Jeffrey Archer #inbetweeny

It's been over a week since I finished this book and upon sitting down to write the review I find a lot of the names (and there were a few in the book) have escaped me so apologies if I refer to 'him who impersonated Bill Clinton' or 'the guy from Iraq who drove them to his village'!

My mum bought the book for a pound following on from the book club reviewing Only Time Will Tell and me liking it. Let me start off by saying this is not Only Time Will Tell, it is nothing at all like Only Time Will Tell, but I do like variety from an author as opposed to feeling like you have read the same book again and again and again.

This is one of the first books I have read that actually featured Sadam Hussein. Not just referring to him as this elusive figure but actually having him speak, being in his war room and witnessing those around him and how they acted towards him. Having just read One Night in Winter I found myself likening Hussein to Stalin (please don’t take that as a political statement, just a naive reader witnessing how fear and ruthlessness ruled the day in these two particular books).

I found it funny that Archer would choose to write about American politics. I either thought he would choose to write about things from an English perspective or stay away from politics entirely. He chose neither however with the White House, the Declaration of Independence, Bill Clinton, and July 4th all being at the heart of the book.

The plot was quite far-fetched (although the build up until you found out what the actual heist was quite good and the suspense Archer built around the heist actually being executed was also good). Impersonating the president, dissembling a classic car to be carried across a desert piece by piece and be reassembled with nothing more than a spanner however was ridiculous at best.

There was humour – Scott eating two meals at the restaurant when his date turned up late (sorry 'his date' I can't remember your name!) and there were also moments of sadness, I didn’t really expect big characters to die but Archer didn’t shy away from it (although being shot in a blaze of glory yards from safety seemed over the top).

I didn’t get the love story between Scott and the secretary who was a spy (again can't remember her name, Hannah?). Scott seemed like a sensible intelligent guy, to fall in love with someone and to want to propose to them after going swimming a couple of times seemed very Disney princess esque. It was only at the end where the previous female ("his date") was mentioned that I remembered I actually wanted Scott to get with her and not "the secretary".

I really liked Dollar Bill's character (ha I can remember his name!) however I felt he laboured the point that there is no honour amongst thieves and at times it was hard to keep track of what Declaration ended up where.

Overall it was a (surprisingly) very American middle of the road political thriller. I got the feeling Scott is a character who will/has popped up before/again but to be honest I would give it a miss if he did as there are better political thrillers out there.

P.S Have you read the Declaration of Independence? How scathing is it about King George III? I had no idea! (Like I said naive reader, please forgive.)


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