Volume 48, Number 14 · September 20, 2001
The Fall of Mr. Toad
By Ian Buruma
Jeffrey Archer: Stranger than Fiction
by Michael Crick
London: Fourth Estate, 527 pp., £8.99 (paper)
To delve into the world of Jeffrey Archer's imagination is a melancholy business. The cardboard heroes of his many novels, mostly men, but a few women too, are distinguished by lit-tle else than flaming ambition. Many of them are frauds, con men, secret philanderers, or undercover assassins. But even the more straightforward ones do not aspire to be prime minister or president of the United States for any particular purpose. They don't want to change the world or govern it better; to get to the top is the thing, the only thing.
Review, 4117 words
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