Tell Tale

September 1, 2017
Archer (Cometh the Hour, 2016, etc.) shifts from the Clifton Chronicles series to spin 13 pieces of thoroughly readable short fiction.In "Who Killed the Mayor," Archer opens the book with a young Neapolitan detective assigned to a small town in Campania to investigate a murder of a man whose presence had been poisoning the idyllic village; the story quickly becomes a farce and concludes with a sharp left turn. Archer's theme changes in "A Gentleman and a Scholar"; in one of two stories set in the United States, a retiring professor--one of the first women to teach at Yale--gives a final lecture on Shakespeare, becoming a study in grace. Archer prefers old-fashioned themes, morality tales or stories in which immorality has its own rewards, but mostly stories that arrive at conclusions rather than fade into a contemporary fog. His dialogue is seamless, and even in short form, Archer has a gift for memorable characters. In the first story, Lt. Antonio Rossetti, the Neapolitan detective, is a picture of self-regard whose sophistication masks ingenuousness. Later, in "The Senior Vice President," Arthur Dunbar becomes a thorough portrait of a decent man, albeit an unimaginative one, warped into a more nuanced being by a cold, faceless corporation. In that story Archer uses his setting to build atmosphere as "the roads became lanes, and the lanes, paths, until he finally saw a turreted castle standing foursquare on a hill in the distance." Don't, however, examine the foreshadowing too closely as that story approaches its O. Henry-esque conclusion. "A Good Toss to Lose" has a melancholy, somewhat Rashomon flair. "The Road to Damascus" lets Archer explore apparent opposites, the spiritual and the ironic. And in a bit of whimsy, Archer gives readers the work of choosing a conclusion in "The Holiday of a Lifetime."Those remembering Saturday Evening Post's short stories will enjoy this collection.

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October 1, 2017

Best-selling author Archer's travels over the past decade inspired this new collection of 13 unpretentious tales. A young detective from Naples struggles to arrest the mayor's murderer in an Italian hill town in "Who Killed the Mayor?" "A Gentleman and a Scholar" revolves around a challenge that Yale students throw at the school's first female professor: to identify random quotes from William Shakespeare's works. The industrious protagonist of "The Car Park Attendant" gets rich, slowly but surely, while the American lit major in "A Wasted Hour" hitches a ride with John Steinbeck. In "The Holiday of a Lifetime," a vacationing couple purposely misplace their luggage in order to cash in on an insurance claim. VERDICT As with Archer's previous collection, And Thereby Hangs a Tale, this new volume again demonstrates the author's talent for captivating his readers with engaging characters and clever plot twists. [See Prepub Alert, 3/13/17.]--Jerry P. Miller, Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2017
Fresh off Archer's hit multivolume Clifton Chronicles comes this collection of 13 short storiesthe shortest of them coming in at exactly 100 words, and more than half of them based on real incidents Archer learned about on his travels. All of the stories spotlight the author's gifts for creating fully fleshed characters and absorbing plots in lean, efficient prose. Among the offerings, there's a story about a devious stamp collector; an Agatha Christielike murder mystery with more than 1,400 suspects; a clever look at the genius of Shakespeare (with a debate about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays); a tale of a love triangle set during WWII; a neat little story about a budding writer who hitches a ride from an elderly man (with a surprising twist at the end); and a heartrending tale about a man whose wife has been cheating on him. All are written with Archer's keen eye for time and place, and his keen ear for dialogue. Another reminder that Archer is as accomplished at writing short stories as he is at writing long-form fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)