Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28304 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Synopsis
At first glance, Richard Armstrong and Keith Townsend seem to have little in common, but both of them are gamblers and are prepared to risk everything in their battle to control the biggest media empire in the world. Only one of them will succeed.

Customer Reviews

Murdoch and Maxwell
Another excellent Archer offering. I was well into it before I realised the two main characters are based on Murdoch and Maxwell. It is an excellenty told tale. One wonders what the Dirty Digger thinks of it if he has read it. Archer is a great story teller who keeps the reader gripped.

Thriller by numbers
Should have known, really. First among Equals: a group of hugely talented driven men with shared past but very different origins become rich and successful and end up on collision course. Tightly constructed plot. Twist and cliff hanger at end.

Kane and Abel. Two hugely talented driven men with shared past but very different origins become rich and successful and end up on collision course. Tightly constructed plot. Twist and cliff hanger at end.

The Fourth Estate:

Hold on, there's a pattern here. In fact, the plots are so tightly constructed they leave little room for doubt.

I enjoyed First Among Equals. I found Kane and Abel more of the same, but still fractionally entertaining. A moment's thought should have warned me that, for all Mr. Archer's story-telling panache, this was going to be a little - familiar.

Not bad, just - the same. Time to move on.

Good, but ending was predictable.
I should mention first of all that this is the only Archer novel I have read and I am not exactly a bookworm in any case. The best part of this book was the development of both the main characters from young kids, right through school in Australia for one and the school of hard knocks in wartime Europe for the other.

Archer goes on to tell a tale of suspense, industrial espionage and ruthless business activities in the pursuit of power, with many twists and turns along the way. It all works superbly, to a point. What really spoiled it for me was reading a review prior to finishing the book and finding out who the two main characters were based on. From that point on what should have been the final twist was predictable all the way, since it actually happened in real life in the 80s.

Archer's writing and fiction are superb, but the worst parts of the book, for me, came when he mixed fact with fiction by bringing real life events and politicians into the story.

Overall I'm very much impressed with Archer's writing, but if I do choose to read one of his novels in future I will do my best to make sure it is one which does not borrow so heavily from the headlines of fifteen or twenty years earlier.