Short And Wicked
After completing the multi-volume Clifton Chronicles, Jeffrey Archer comes out with Tell Tale, a collection on thirteen enjoyable short stories.
The first story, Who Killed the Mayor, is the best, and sets the tone for the others, in a few of which clever people get away with crime. In this story, a young Neapolitan detective is sent to an idyllic town in Campania to investigate the murder of a thuggish man who had threatened the peace and prosperity of the town. The problem for the cop is that everyone wants to confess to the murder, and since he knows how it was done, he is aware that they are all lying for some strange reason. The story has a delightfully wicked twist in the end.
There is a charming story, A Wasted Hour, in which an aspiring writer hitches a ride with a man, without recognising him as her icon; in Senior Vice President, a diligent banker is forced to go rogue when he is treated unfairly by the management. A trip to a Holocaust site causes the preset career of a rich student to veer of course in A Road to Damascus.
A Gentleman and A Scholar is about Shakespeare scholar who fights the chauvinism of her time to become the first female professor at Yale. The Holiday Of A Lifetime, has three alternative ending the reader can pick from.
There are a couple of flash fiction tales, in which Archer takes up the challenge of writing the exact number of words demanded.
He seems to have fun writing the stories—some of which are set in places he has been to and people he may have met—and the reader can zip throughTell Tale in a single sitting and put it back on the shelf with a smile.
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