Jeffrey Archer
I wasn’t really very happy with “Cometh the Hour” because I felt the author was stretching the series. I was afraid whether that would mean that the series would end with a whimper. Thankfully it didn’t. This was a fitting finale to The Clifton Chronicles.
I think it’s only when you see the series as a whole do you understand the kind of changes that have happened in the world through the lifetime of Harry Clifton. In that sense, it is a great lens to see the changing nature of society – its behavior, consumption, worldview and so on. While the author has done his best to show a changing order and system of the world, the bias to an old world charm is obvious. Perhaps an indication of how he’d have liked it to be.
While I have not read up on the subject, I think at least a part of Harry Clifton is modeled on the author himself, or maybe his aspirations for himself. Harry’s last book as an author is said to be completely different from the works so far as they go above and beyond what is expected from his novels. In that respect, I think in this book, Archer has reminded me of his glory days. The twists were much better than anywhere else in the series, and he weaved in humaneness and compassion without any drama.
An excellent closure for an above average series.
