“And that’s when it all went wrong.” I hit a snag here in the third installment of the Clifton Chronicles. It started out with Giles Barrington getting the title and Harry and Emma finally being free to marry. They did decide, though, that since there might be an outside chance that Hugo Barrington was Harry’s father (and yes, ew) that they would have no more children. Thus setting the stage for them to track down and adopt the little baby left in the basket by […]

Since Mr. Archer has a penchant for high drama and cliffhangers, the first book in the Clifton Chronicles ended with Harry assuming the identity of a dead American and landing in New York City only to be charged with murder. Back home, everyone thinks he is dead, having been killed when the ship he had signed on to was sunk by a German U-Boat. His mother Maisie and paramour Emma grieve in their own way, with Emma finally taking matters into her own hands. After […]

This first book in Jeffery Archer’s Clifton Chronicles is a big fat serving of good old fashioned brain twinkies. A sweeping tale set in Bristol, it essentially begins with Harry Clifton’s birth in 1919. When he is a baby his father, a dock worker at Barrington’s Shipyards, disappears and is presumed dead. Only this mystery is kept from young Harry and he is told that his father died in the Great War. He and his mother Maisie have a hard scrabble life, constantly under the […]

Odile has always been different and stand-offish, with a quicksilver temperament. Just 18 years old, she has left school and lives with her family in Lausanne, aimlessly drifting through life. Her mother is rather severe, hosting bridge parties with an ever-present glass of whiskey in hand and her father is distant, spending his days in his study writing and drinking wine. She does have a soft spot for her older brother, Bob, so when she decides to go to Paris and commit suicide she posts […]

It was a dark and stormy night. Again and again and again. Because Ursula Todd is fated to be reborn again and again and again. I did this thing backwards, because I read A God in Ruins before this, but I don’t think it was a real disadvantage. I did read them some months apart, so there was time for things to settle and for all the other books that I have read since then to crowd in and take the freshness off my memories […]