Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66080 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-04
• Released on: 2007-09-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

The Times
`A master of the intelligent thriller... The Ghost is Harris back on sparkling form'

Sunday Times
`Truly thrilling'

Sunday Telegraph
`Harris has written a remarkable thriller'

Customer Reviews

Entertainingly implausible
The narrator of Robert Harris's new novel is a ghostwriter assigned to write the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister. But all is not as it should be; the ex-PM, Adam Lang, finds himself exiled in Martha's Vinyard with a war crimes indictment hanging over him. A previous 'ghost' had died in mysterious circumstances. And what of the shadowy right wing organisations that lurk in the background?

Lang, is a thinly fictionalised version of Tony Blair, a former friend of Harris, and much has been made of this and of other real life charcaters who are meant to crop up in the book. Lang's wife Ruth is said to be Cherie (she's not) and there's meant to be a Robin Cook figure (there's not, really).

I was under the impression that this would be a novel about a former PM brooding over his legacy, but it's actually a decent - if not implausible - thriller. Some of it is far fetched, though never as ludicrous as a Dan Brown book, and it is entertaining and gripping. I read it in an evening.

There are echoes of Graham Greene at times, and the ending was reminisent of Evelyn Waugh's Handful of Dust. The implications of Britain's 'special relationship' with America are laid down in terrifying if not exagerated terms. And while too much has been made of Harris's former friendship with the Blairs, there are flashes of insight that are revealing and amusing.

Not a brilliant work of literature by any means, but a better thriller or beach novel you won't read this year.

Fitting epitaph for the Blair era
I didn't expect to like this half as much as I did - I have long thought of Robert Harris as airport fodder. I'm sorry, I now see that was unfair.

This isn't exactly literature but it's well plotted, well paced and well written. Its fictionalisation is often wafer-thin -- even the revelatory photograph of former prime minister "Adam Lang" is very much like a well-known picture of Tony Blair during his university days.

It's curious that someone so well entrenched within mainstream journalism is prepared to write a book about CIA conspiracies against the British Labour Party - I would have thought this stuff wasn't widely believed beyond the far left. But well done to Harris for writing such a plausible thriller set in this sort of world.

A very good read
This is a departure for Harris, being set in contemporary Britain against the background of international politics and it works very well. The narrator's voice is very clear as he moves from amused detachment through bewilderment and fear to taking charge of his own destiny. The references to the current political scene are incisive and often witty. It's written with pace and verve. I read it on one sitting so I suppose I found it "unputdownable".

If I have a criticism, it's that the trail is a bit too easy for the ghost writer to follow.

I still prefer his earlier novels, especially Fatherland and Enigma, which were not set in the current time and I re-read those often. I can't imagine re-reading this one as there is not quite enough going on outside the hunt for the story hence only four stars.

It is a very good, gripping read though.