False Impression

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Mystery & Thrillers
Author:	Jeffrey Archer

This is Jeffrey Archer's first fictional novel written after his early release from prison. I must say he did regain some of his earlier better forms, with a lot of unpredictability, suspense, thrill and more.

Which was fortunate as his last fictional novel, Sons of Fortune, was thoroughly disappointing.

In this book, the backdrop of the story was the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 disaster at New York. However, that tragedy itself was only present in a surrealistic sense, contributing to some elements of the background, without making any other significant impact.

In the book, Anna Petrescu, an art expert, having been fired from Sotheby's for a momentary professional indiscretion, was hired by parvenu migrant from Romania, Fenston, whose small private bank with shady roots, loaned money to people with artwork of considerable worth as collaterals.

Anna Petrescu learned that Fenston was cheating the clients by not providing them with professional bank advice. The latest target was an impoverished British noble, Victoria Wentworth, whose family legacy included a rare self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh, painted after the artist sliced off his own ear.

Unknown to Anna, she was also a target of an FBI operation who got their sights on her boss after several of his clients died under mysterious circumstances, allowing the bank to acquire their artworks for loans far below their market worth.

Just after Anna was fired by Fenston for communicating the viable alternatives to Victoria Wentworth, their office block at WTC was hit by commercial planes in the 9-11 disaster.

Anna was presumed dead, and realised she had a chance to help the Wentworths. Her ex-boss, somewhat suspicious of her status, tried to expedite claiming the Van Gogh.

The security blanket on air travel thrown around the US after the terrorist attack helped Anna buy some time, but also hindered her own attempt to fly out of the US.

Having reached UK in time to intercept the painting through a bold ruse, Anna barely managed to strike a deal with Arabella Wentworth, heir of the estate after Victoria was mysterious murdered. From there, she flew to Bucharest and Tokyo, aware that her boss had sent someone after her, but unaware she was being tracked not by one but two distinct parties.

The narrations showed day-by-day developments in different parts of the world, and their impact on each other not immediately apparent until later. This subtleness relived Jeffrey Archer's earlier novels.

There were several surprisng twists to delight the readers, reminisent of his better works too.

However, there were also a couple of unforgivable mistakes.

First, was a plot continuity - around the 3rd quarter of the book, it was not explained how the FBI got hold of an important piece of clue from an assassin who was arrested by the authorities in Bucharest, Romania.

Second was the apparent ease of air travel outside the USA when immediately after the 9-11, all airports worldwide, especially of developed countries, implemented highly stringent security measures.

There is a lot of art criticism in the book, which make interesting reading, though an uninitiated would not know the accuracy of the claims.

I only hope this mark the author's way to further improvement of his novels in the future.