A number one bestseller from the award-winning master of the literary and historical thriller genre- Robert Harris. A gripping, thrilling explosion into Russia's mysterious history...
Robert Harris is the author of eleven bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and Conclave. His forthcoming book, Munich, coming out in September 2017, is set over the four days of the Munich Conference, and is filled with the real-life characters and events of the time. Several of his books have been filmed, including The Ghost, which was directed by Roman Polanski. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.
The best thriller for years
*Sunday Telegraph*
His best yet: a fast paced thriller, pulsing with suspense, that
surpasses even the expertly handled tensions and twists of
Fatherland
*Sunday Times*
Robert Harris confirms his position as Britain's pre-eminent
literary thriller writer with Archangel
*The Times*
A really gripping narrative, full of suspense and unexpected turns,
which will keep you hooked until the climax on its final page... I
have never read a thriller based in Russia which has such an
authentic feel
*Evening Standard*
Archangel is Harris's strongest book yet, confirming him as the
leading current exponent of the intelligent literary thriller
*The Times*
The best thriller for years * Sunday Telegraph *
His best yet: a fast paced thriller, pulsing with suspense, that
surpasses even the expertly handled tensions and twists of
Fatherland * Sunday Times *
Robert Harris confirms his position as Britain's pre-eminent
literary thriller writer with Archangel * The Times *
A really gripping narrative, full of suspense and unexpected turns,
which will keep you hooked until the climax on its final page... I
have never read a thriller based in Russia which has such an
authentic feel * Evening Standard *
Archangel is Harris's strongest book yet, confirming him as
the leading current exponent of the intelligent literary thriller *
The Times *
As in his first thriller, Fatherland, Harris again plunders the past to tell an icy-slick story set mostly in the present. Readers are plunged into mystery, danger and the affairs of great men at once, as, outside Moscow in 1953, Stalin suffers a fatal stroke, and the notorious Beria, head of Stalin's secret police, orders a young guard to swipe a key from the dictator's body, to stand watch as Beria uses it to steal a notebook from Stalin's safe and then to help bury the notebook deep in the ground. These events unfold not in flashback proper but as told to American Sovietologist C.R.A. "Fluke" Kelso by the guard, now an old drunk. Following a lead from the old man's story as well as other clues, Kelso, soon accompanied by an American satellite-TV journalist, goes in pursuit of the notebook and, later, the explosive secret it contains; others, including those who cherish the days of Stalin's might, are on the chase as well. With this hunt as backbone, the plot fleshes out in muscular fashion, fed by assorted conspiratorial interests and a welter of colorful, if sometimes too obvious (Stalin as madman; Beria as sadist), characters. The crumbling ruin that is today's Moscow comes alive in the details, which continue as Kelso's search moves north into the frozen desolation of the White Sea port of Archangel. Sex, violence and violent sex all play a part in Harris's entertaining, well-constructed, intelligently lurid tale, which, along with his first two novels, places him squarely in the footsteps not of "Conrad, Green and le Carré," as the publisher would have it, but of Frederick Forsyth. And, like Forsyth, Harris has yet to write a novel without bestseller stamped on it‘including this one. Simultaneous audio book; optioned for film by Mel Gibson. (Feb.)
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