To Cut a Long Story Short - Hardcover

Archer, Jeffrey

3.76

7,394 ratings by Goodreads

9780002261494: To Cut a Long Story Short

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002261499 ISBN 13: 9780002261494

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2000

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

The latest short-story collection from Britain’s bestselling writer, ‘the greatest storyteller of our age’.

The fourteen new stories in To Cut a Long Story Short follow in the tradition of Jeffrey Archer’s storytelling.

An elderly man who doesn’t know which of his relations to leave his fortune to, declares himself bankrupt to find out who really cares about him – only to be surprised by the results.

A man listens in on a conversation on a crossed line, which changes his whole life.

A South African, a long-standing believer in apartheid, has a change of heart.

A criminal who wants the police to catch him so he can live off his ill-gotten gains.

Two old friends find themselves on opposite sides in a murder case.

A Henry Moore statue disappears and reappears in a different form.

A study of seven men, each of whom believes he should have the job of the man immediately above him.

This collection is Archer’s finest to date.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Fraud, deceit, deception, lying, bankruptcy, infidelity: these are the recurrent themes that concern Jeffrey Archer in his fourth collection of short stories, To Cut a Long Story Short. Of the 14 stories gathered here, nine are asterisked as being "based on true incidents" but the whole collection is remarkable for the extent to which Archer's own chequered career finds echoes in his fiction. In "Crime Pays", Kenny Merchant--"that wasn't his real name, but then, little was real about Kenny" finds an ingenious loophole in the Data Protection Act to make a financial killing, whilst in "The Letter" a wife enjoys reading a kinky love letter from her lover (a well-known novelist) in front of her husband. Her lover recalls making love in "the loo at the Caprice" and fantasises about "being tied to a four-poster bed, with you standing over me in a police sergeant's uniform".

In one of the few stories that does not involve people conning one another, "The Grass is Greener", the moral of the story appears to be that the head of an international bank experiences more pain and personal turmoil than Bill the beggar who sits on the street outside. In A Change of Heart, a racist white South African devotes himself to doing good for the black community after receiving a black man's heart following a near-fatal car accident. Archer's fans will undoubtedly enjoy this collection but other readers may find its relish for duplicity rather dubious or at best find its sentimental morality rather cloying. --Guy Smit

Review:

‘A storyteller in the class of Alexandre Dumas’
Washington Post

‘Archer has a gift for plot that can only be described as genius’
Daily Telegraph

‘The man’s a genius’
Fay Weldon, Evening Standard

‘Few are more famous than Archer for keeping the pages turning’
Peter Stothard, The Times

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.