To Cut a Long Story Short - Softcover

Archer, Jeffrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250029457 ISBN 13: 9781250029454

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 2013

Synopsis

In this short story collection by Jeffrey Archer, a dying man doesn't know which of his relations to leave his fortune to, only to find out who really cares about him. A chance overheard conversation changes the course of an entire man's life. A woman savors every word of a letter from her lover while her husband reads over her shoulder. A criminal on the loose confesses that he is desperate to be caught. A widowed mother learns the cold truth about her second husband at the dawn of her third marriage. A pencil, the cruelest of the artist's tools, leaves nothing to chance... in To Cut a Long Story Short.

This edition of the book is the deluxe, tall rack mass market paperback.

About this title

Product Description:

Title: To Cut a Long Story Short <>Binding: Mass Market Paperback <>Author: JeffreyArcher <>Publisher: St.Martin'sPress

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, while 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

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1250029457
• ISBN 13: 9781250029454
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 331