Book review: Cometh the Hour

Published May 11, 2016

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Cometh the Hour is the penultimate book in Jeffrey Archer’s Clifton Chronicles.

Five have come before it, and book six takes off with the jury about to read their verdict on the case between Emma Clifton and her ex-sister-in-law Lady Virginia Fenwick.

As we’ve come to learn from the Barrington and Clifton families, nothing is simple and straightforward in their lives.

Giles must make a decision on whether to give up politics and step down as candidate for Bristol Docklands.

He wants to rescue Karin, the woman he loves, from behind the Iron Curtain, but things don’t go well.

Harry Clifton is still on a mission to rescue author Anatoly Babakov from a Siberian prison, where he had been locked up for daring to speak out against the Russian president. Emma Clifton, meanwhile, becomes involved with former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s political career that is just taking off.

And Sebastian Clifton falls madly in love with Priya, an Indian girl whose parents have already chosen a husband for her, while at the same time trying to keep his rivals, who are plotting to take over Farthings Bank of which he is now chief executive, at bay.

If you’ve been devouring the Clifton Chronicles thus far, then Cometh the Hour, like all the previous books, will not disappoint, as Archer excels yet again with another fast-paced instalment.

From the first book released in 2011, Archer has released one a year, but I read somewhere that due to his fans’ enthusiasm for the characters, he decided to fast-track the last one.

The last book This Was a M will be released in November.

But if you haven’t read the previous five, get started from book one. It won’t make any sense otherwise.

I leave you with this blurb taken from the book:

This was a Man opens with a shot being fired, but who pulled the trigger, and who lives and who dies?

In Whitehall, Giles Barrington discovers the truth about his wife, Karin, from the cabinet secretary. Is she a spy or a pawn in a larger game?

Harry Clifton sets out to write his magnum opus, while his wife Emma completes her 10 years as chairwoman of the Bristol Royal Infirmary, and receives an unexpected call from Margaret Thatcher offering her a job. * Cometh the Hour By Jeffrey Archer is published by Pan Macmillan

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