Cometh the Hour

January 18, 2016
This sixth, and penultimate, addition to the Clifton Chronicles series (after Mightier Than the Sword) continues with the Cliftons and the Barringtons in the 1970sâtheir family fortunes and travails, love affairs, political dramas, business mishaps and espionage entanglements. The story begins with a libel trial and a suicide note, bringing embarrassment and consequences for Emma and Harry Clifton, Lady Virginia Fenwick, and Sir Giles Barrington. Sir Giles, in love with an East German translator, risks everything to bring her over the Berlin Wall and to England, but is she smitten or a spy? Meanwhile, Lady Virginia, Sir Giles's ex-wife, is becoming desperate after having been financially cut off by her father. She victimizes a wealthy, gullible American in an outrageous scam, but the victim's wife is on to her. Emma's husband, best-selling author Harry Clifton, uses his photographic memory and oratory skills to help the world recognize a Nobel Prize-winning, imprisoned Russian author. Emma and Harry's son, Sebastian, still has a messy love life which now turns shockingly violent. Archer continues his storytelling magic to create characters of spellbinding substance, and readers can count on his surprising twists and shocking conclusion. Here, just when the end seems too tidy, Archer provides a killer cliffhanger.

September 1, 2015

This sixth title in Archer's New York Times best-selling "Clifton Chronicles" opens with a suicide note and ends up packed with goings-on, e.g., Harry Clifton plots to get Anatoly Babakov released from a gulag in Siberia and Lady Virginia faces bankruptcy.With a one-day laydown on February 23.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2016
Archer's Clifton Chronicles makes it to the 1970s in the sixth installment. The major players are all here and back to their usual antics: Giles is in danger of losing his political seat once again; Emma is still thwarted by those who wish to see her booted from the Barrington Shipping Company's board; Lady Virginia schemes and seethes; Sebastian remains unlucky in love but supremely lucky in business. Archer knows his formula well, and that's not a bad thinghis fans eat it up. And the man can write twists like no other. There are a few missteps in this one, including a random story line introducing a character summarily dispensed with shortly after she appears on the scene, and the saga of Russian author Anatoly Babakov has grown stale by this point, but readers will be eager to get to the latest cliffhanger and will hardly be able to wait for the final volume of the series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)