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Title: Archangel by Hopkins Harris ISBN: 0099282410 Publisher: Arrow Publications Pub. Date: February, 2000 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.57
Rating: 5
Summary: Another gem for Harris
Comment: Robert Harris doesn't just give you mysteries, he tweaks the genre by adding his own "what if" historical twists. This latest is a gem. It begins somewhat slowly then the pace picks up until it reaches high speed in the frozen wastes of northern Russia.
His protagonist is far from the usual adventurer; he's Fluke Kelso, a cynical, down on his luck academic attending a symposium in present day Moscow. The notorious Joe Stalin is, in a sense, the villain. Soon after he arrives in Russia Kelso is presented with evidence of secret papers of Stalin. From there he investigates a decades-old mystery. Along the way he meets unusual characters including a scholarly prostitute, an over-eager reporter and some scary old-guard Russians.
The plot is more than a simple mystery. Harris challenges you to imagine what will happen to the new Russia and what some of the forces were that shaped the old Soviet Union.
His characters, realistic descriptions of the Russian landscape in winter and the imaginative plot will keep you reading until the last sentence.
Rating: 4
Summary: TOO SPELLBINDING TO PUT DOWN
Comment: A setting that chills the bone; a premise that chills the heart. These are the pillars of Archangel, a tension driven third novel by former BBC correspondent and London Times columnist Robert Harris.
As in Fatherland (1992), with its disturbing thesis that Nazi Germany had been victorious in World War II and Hitler still lived, Mr. Harris skillfully blends fact and fiction to craft an equally frightening tale of contemporary Russia.
"There can be no doubt that it is Stalin rather than Hitler who is the most alarming figure of the twentieth century.....Stalin, unlike Hitler has not been exorcised....Stalin stands in a historical tradition of rule by terror, which existed before him, which he refined, and which could exist again. His, not Hitler's, is the specter that should worry us."
These words are spoken by "Fluke" Kelso, an antithetic hero, to be sure. Thrice divorced, an unsuccessful writer, he is a historian, a Sovietologist who greets alcohol with enthusiasm and his colleagues with ennui.
In unforgivingly frigid Moscow, where "air tasted of Asia - of dust and soot and Eastern spices, cheap gasoline, black tobacco, sweat," Kelso is a part of a symposium invited to view recently opened archival materials.
He is visited in his hotel room by Papu Rapava, an older man, a drunk, "a survivor of the Arctic Circle camps," who claims to have been an eye-witness to Stalin's death. Rapava says he was once bodyguard and chauffeur for Laventy Beria, the chief of the secret police. Rapava claims to have accompanied Beria to Stalin's room the night the GenSec suffered a stroke, and to have assisted Beria in stealing Stalin's private papers, a black oilskin notebook, which was later buried.
As Kelso decides to spend his final day in Moscow either refuting or corroborating Rapava's story, the writer comes face to face with Mamantov, a Stalinist who feels "the force of Comrade Stalin, even from the grave," and lives amidst the ex-dictator's memorabilia - miniatures, boxes, stamps, medals.
Surveying the collection, Kelso shudders, remembering that today one in six Russians believe Stalin to be their greatest leader. "Stalin was seven times more popular than Boris Yeltsin, while poor old Gorbachev hadn't even scored enough votes to register."
As Kelso becomes convinced that Stalin's secret papers do exist and obsessed with finding them, he is dogged by R. J. O'Brian, an overly zealous reporter whose beat is the world.
But, once the notebook is found instead of holding answers, it poses more questions. The last piece of the puzzle may lie in Archangel, a desolate White Sea port where "Everything had decayed. The facades of the buildings were pitted and peeling. Parts of the road had subsided."
Together Kelso and O'Brian drive 800 miles across an eerily deserted frozen landscape to reach Archangel before a storm rolling in from Siberia buries them or pursuing government agents capture them.
What the two find, Stalin's long hidden secret, is more appalling than either of them could have imagined.
With ever escalating suspense Mr. Harris catapults his mesmerizing narrative to a shocking denouement
Film rights for this unsettling tale have been sold to Mel Gibson, and it will surely capture a slot on bestseller lists.. Archangel is too close to possible for comfort, and too spellbinding to put down.
Rating: 3
Summary: A missed opportunity
Comment: Robert Harris in his novel Archangel presents me with something of a dilemma. I enjoyed thoroughly some aspects of the book and others I found to be almost unreadable. I do not have an issue with plots that are far-fetched or fantastic in nature, but to convince me they do need an element of conviction. At times, particularly in the latter half of Archangel, I felt the author wanted nothing more than to get the book over with.
Joseph Stalin is the central figure in the plot, his thoughts, beliefs and actions shape the events of the novel. Indeed, Harris writes well of the power of a belief system that led to the terrors of Stalinist Russia. He conveys the almost depressing fear of that period in history and transposes it to a modern day Soviet Union. Thus Harris is able to set the scene of the book in an effective way and the tension builds in a convincing manner. However, in doing so Archangel is set in an almost Orwellian Russia, where the bad guys are so bad that they come over a little cliched and the Russian people become caricatures, almost totally grey and devoid of humanity.
There was real scope in this book to develop an excellent story line to a thrilling conclusion. For me this did not happen in that the conclusion was so predictable that perhaps the description 'thriller' was not an appropriate one. In rushing the second half of the novel and putting so little effort into the conclusion Robert Harris missed a opportunity to make a mediocre novel into an excellent one.
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Title: Fatherland by Robert J. Harris ISBN: 0061006629 Publisher: Harper Mass Market Paperbacks Pub. Date: December, 1995 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Enigma by Robert Harris ISBN: 0804115486 Publisher: Ivy Books Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Snow Wolf by Glenn Meade ISBN: 0312962118 Publisher: St Martins Mass Market Paper Pub. Date: May, 1997 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Sands of Sakkara by Glenn Meade ISBN: 0312971087 Publisher: St Martins Mass Market Paper Pub. Date: June, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Black Cross by Greg Iles ISBN: 0451185196 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: November, 1995 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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