Saturday, December 1, 2012

(167) A Matter of Honor by Jeffrey Archer

If you care to check the number of books I have written about in the past six months, perhaps you would be impressed if I say that the above mentioned book is certainly the best I have read lately.

What I really like about Adam Scott is that he is not perfect in every way as some fictional heroes were painted to be. He needed the gift from his grandfather to study in the right school to qualify to join the army. He was a good soldier, but the smear on his father's reputation prevented him from progressing in the armed forces. Instead of drinking himself to oblivion or becoming bitter, he resigned and look at greener pasture: foreign service.

One thing that has the ring of truth in it was his new girl friend being killed by the Russian agent. Surely even the important characters also get killed, it cannot be that all heroes and heroines survive kicking until the very last page.

Archer made Scott excellent but not unreal. Even a good and great guy is caught by the crooks. What gladdens the heart is to read that the mole: mentor was extinguished by Romanov before the story ends. I remember learning in world history that USA bought Alaska(thought of as an ice wasteland) from Russia for a relatively small amount of money hundreds of years ago. As a teenager I thought Russia was stupid to sell such a large territory for so little money. Later, the transaction was brought up by my Greek Economics Lecturer in college Econ 101. He talked about it and calculated the present and future value of the sum in question. After he related how big the purchasing power in the by gone years were, I began to see the transaction as economically sound.

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