Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #84754 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 656 pages

Synopsis
High adventure, furious plotting, blackmail and betrayal...'The Colonel' is rumoured to have masterminded several of the most successful robberies in the UK over the last forty years. But who is he? Edward de Jersey, now a wealthy man, owns a very successful racing yard and stud farm and his pride and joy is his horse, Royal Flush, who he has always dreamed will one day win the Derby. But de Jersey's luck runs out when his trusted financial advisor invests his fortune in a fledgling internet company which goes bust, leaving de Jersey with no capital and mounting debts. In danger of losing everything, De Jersey resurrects his criminal past, turning to the internet to find a team of specialists who will help him pull off the most audacious heist in history.

Customer Reviews

I Folded
Having liked Lynda La Plante's television work I looked forward to reading this. However I was sadly disappointed. The plot is not believable. The idea of using computer hacking techniques to get security information about the crown jewels and the Royal Intinerary falls down on the simple basis...that if a hacker could get that information it would make more sense to hack into bank accounts and steal money like that rather than the elaborate and credibility stretching plot outlined here. The characterisation is poor and there are no likeable characters. Half-way through I realised I didn't care what happened to any of them.

Had me jumping on the Sofa!
Regardless of any negative feedback, this was my best read of the year so far. This book had me on edge throughtout. The characters, their circumstances and even their desperate hopes are very realisitic. Best buy this year.

Very poor
Oh dear, this book is shockingly bad. In summary, Lynda La Plante's Royal Flush is an outstanding example of poorly-written, cliché-ridden pulp fiction twaddle. It is also a remarkably boring story (considering the subject matter, which is no less than the theft of the Crown Jewels -- a conceit that almost demands some excitement). The characters, starting with the ridiculous Edward de Jersey, are all clichés of types that only exist in the impoverished imagination of hack writers: that is they have no semblance to people in the real world; and their dialogue is uniformally witless. The main plot is both predictable and lacking any excitement, while the subplots about horse-racing, Internet fraud and real estate deals, are all tedious in the extreme. The horsey stuff is clearly presented to appeal to a Daily Mail-level idea of what is classy and glamorous in British society: millionaire trainers flitting about by helicopter, people quaffing champagne, name-dropping, shopping at "designer" stores and staying at famous-name London hotels. All balls. The novel is very long, by the way, and written throughout with such a lack of verve and skill that one wonders whether Royal Flush is a case of an author who can not write very well or one who thinks so little or their readership that they assumes any old rubbish will suffice. Royal Flush (a US version called Royal Heist is essentially the same novel, by the way, rejigged for an American readership) is in short one of the most lamentably bad pulp thrillers I have ever read. Dan Brown's wildly over-rated Da Vinci Code -- twaddle though that is, too -- seems positively skilful in comparison to this very bad book. The absurdly-named Lynda La Plante (presumably an invented moniker) writes with all the skill of a potted plant.