RIP Jeffrey Archer

Jeffrey Archer has died aged 86. He was one of my all time favourite authors. I literally purchased every one of his novels, and all his short stories collections.

Kane and Abel is probably my favourite of his novels. So gripping. Closely followed by First Among Equals and The Prodigal Daughter.

He was also a very talented politician, and a flawed human being. But only Archer could use his prison time to write more best sellers. He has sold more than 275 million books, which would make hime one of the top 30 authors of all time (Shakespeare is first and Agatha Christie 2nd).

Some books you don’t reread, but I find his books so great I will often go back to them after a few years.

He always has a twist at the end of his stories, and it reminds me once when I was flying to Zurich and reading one of his novels. I had around 10 pages to go and I let out a fairly loud yell on the plane. The stewardess came over and asked me what the problem was. I showed her the book, and how there was a misprint with the final 10 pages being a copy of the first 10 pages. This meant I was stuck in the air for a further 10 hours, unable to find out how the book ended. Fortunately I managed to find an English language edition in Switzerland, where I finished the book.