“Best Kept Secret” by Jeffrey Archer – The Passing of the Torch

Best Kept Secret is the third part of the Clifton Chronicles by Jeffrey Archer, and contrary to what some people believed, it isn’t the last one. As a matter of fact, chances are that Archer himself has no idea how many more of them he will be writing.

Just like the second part, this one takes off after the last one’s end as the House of Lords has to vote on who will inherit the Barrington family fortune and Giles prepares to make his case and defend his seat.

Meanwhile, Harry Clifton is trying to promote his latest novel in America, his beloved Emma sets out to search for the girl who was found in her father’s office on the night of his murder, and his son Sebastian unwittingly gets caught in an international art fraud scheme.

Archer has finally decided to branch out his stories a bit, and contrary to the previous novels, the pages aren’t mainly dedicated to Harry anymore. As a matter of fact, there are now numerous main characters who stand on equal footing with each other, and each one has quite an interesting story to tell.

However, the truth is that the multiple storylines do not come for free; each one of them pays in terms of development. To put it in other words, there are more stories, but they are of lesser quality. While the book is by no means bad (I actually found it a notch livelier than the other books), it does feel a bit like an experiment.

Despite it being a bit rough on the development side, the book remains an impressive technical achievement, with Archer being quite a skilled writer with a knack for developing characters in a realistic and compelling way that actually makes you care for them.

On the whole, if you are a fan of the Clifton Chronicles and have read the previous two entries in the series, then you can safely go forth and read the third book; I guarantee you’ll have a real blast.

While you can read it as a standalone if you want to, you will find yourself at loss and miss out on some references, so I do recommend checking out the first two novels if you haven’t yet.

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Jeffrey Archer Personal site Jeffrey Archer is not only the author of the Clifton Chronicles and a number of other novels, short stories and even autobiographical prison diaries, but he is also an active politician and even officially titled the Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare.