6 reviews for Cat O Nine Tales
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Cat O Nine Tales
by Jeffery Archer
Description:
Some of these twelve stories were inspired by the two years Jeffrey Archer spent in prison, including the story of a company chairman who tries to poison his wife while on a trip to St. Petersburg with unexpected consequences. “The Red King” is a tale about a con man who discovers that an English lord requires one more chess piece to complete a set that would be worth a fortune.
In another tale of deception, “The Commissioner,” a Bombay con artist ends up in the morgue after he uses the police chief as bait in his latest scam. “The Perfect Murder” reveals how a convict manages to remove an old enemy while he’s locked up in jail, and then set up two prison officers as his alibi. In “Charity Begins at Home,” an accountant realizes he has achieved nothing in his life, and sets out to make a fortune before he retires. And then there is Archer’s favorite, “In the Eye of the Beholder,” in which a handsome star athlete falls in love with a three-hundred-pound woman . . . who happens to be the ninth-richest woman in Italy.
Jeffrey Archer is the only author to have topped international bestseller lists with his fiction, nonfiction, and short stories. Cat o’Nine Tales is Archer at his best: witty, poignant, sad, surprising, and unforgettable.
About The Author
Archer wrote his first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, in the autumn of 1974, as a means of avoiding bankruptcy. The book was picked up by the literary agent Deborah Owen and published first in the US, then eventually in Britain in the autumn of 1976. A BBC Television adaptation of the book was broadcast in 1990, and a radio adaptation was aired on BBC Radio 4 in the early 1980s.
Kane and Abel (1979) proved to be his best-selling work, reaching number one on The New York Times bestsellers list. Like most of his early work it was edited by Richard Cohen, the Olympic fencing gold-medallist. It was made into a television mini-series by CBS in 1985, starring Peter Strauss and Sam Neill. The following year, Granada TV screened a ten-part adaptation of another Archer bestseller, First Among Equals, which told the story of four men and their quest to become Prime Minister. In the U.S. edition of the novel, the character of Andrew Fraser was eliminated, reducing the number of protagonists to three.
As well as novels and short stories, Archer has also written three stage plays. The first, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, opened in 1987 and ran at the Queen’s Theatre in London’s West End for over a year. However, Archer’s next play, Exclusive, was not well received by critics, and closed after a few weeks. His final play, The Accused, opened at the Theatre Royal, Windsor on 26 September 2000, before transferring to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in the West End in December.
Archer has stated that he spends considerable time writing and re-writing each book. He goes abroad to write the first draft, working in blocks of two hours at a time, then writes anything up to seventeen drafts in total. In 1988 author Kathleen Burnett accused Archer of plagiarising a story she’d written and including it in his short-story collection, A Twist in the Tale. Archer denied he had plagiarised the story, claiming he’d simply been inspired by the idea.
It has been suggested that Archer’s books undergo an extensive editing process prior to publication. Whilst Archer’s books are commercially successful, critics have been generally unfavourable towards his writing. However, journalist Hugo Barnacle, writing for The Independent about The Fourth Estate (1996), thought the novel, while demonstrating that “the editors don’t seem to have done any work”, was “not wholly unsatisfactory”.
Since 2010, Archer has written the first draft of each new book at his luxury villa in Majorca, called “Writer’s Block”.
In 2011, Archer published the first of seven books in The Clifton Chronicles, which follow the life of Harry Clifton from his birth in 1920, through to the finale in 2020. The first novel in the series, Only Time Will Tell, tells the story of Harry from 1920 through to 1940, and was published in the UK on 12 May 2011. The sixth instalment, Cometh the Hour, was published on 25 February 2016. The final novel in the series, This Was a Man, was published on 3 November 2016.
Archer’s next novel has been provisionally titled Heads You Win, and will be published in 2017, along with another volume of short stories.
Skryf Review
“Excellent Reading”
Abbas
I had once come across an interview of Jeffry archer where he had expressed his love for cricket and how he admired Rahul Dravid’s batting. But that was my knowledge bound about the author whose name is ever so advertising in golden font among piles of paperbacks dominating the city bookstore racks. But surprisingly no one ever recommended or gifted me any of his work so on a lazy Sunday afternoon I casually picked up this book from my wife’s bag which she too had borrowed from someone and forgot to go through. In fact it had began with exploring the sarcastic anthropomorphic feline illustrations by Roland Searle that caught my imagination and in no time I found myself turning the pages to find the shortest story in the book to begin with. I started with the ‘Alibi’ and immediately liked JA’s light and minimal but intriguing storytelling. I finished it in no time and immediately felt the push to savor the rest.
Navya
I love Jeffery Archer and consider him among the premier short story writers of our era. This collection however is not among his best short works that I have encountered. Don’t get me wrong it is still a worthwhile read for Archer fans and short story enthusisats. The ironic thing is this collection contains 12 works, based upon prison and criminal themes. 9 of the 12 are based upon stories Archer gleaned during his own imprisonment while the other 3 are his own creations. the ironic thing is his 3 original stories were for me the least interesting of the collection. had this book contained only the 9 stories, I very well might have gone 4 stars although that would still be borderline at best. Archer is still brilliant and able to weave brilliantly detailed and descriptive scenes with both likeable and unlikeable characters in such a short stretch…but not up to the level I hold him!
pankti
Twelve stories, nine of which ‘Lord’ Archer takes the liberty of borrowing and embellishing from fellow inmates while in lockdown. That’s right, our beleaguered nobleman apparently found a way to fall from the lofty grace of membership in the ranks of Parliament to becoming just another scumbag perjurer doing time. While Archer claims to have some interesting turns of fate within the book’s tales, reality again trumps fiction when you consider that this guy was paid for helping to draft ineffective and rotten legislation that landed a bunch of people in jail, and then when Archer arrives to the big house himself, he shamelessly takes their stories and publishes them when he’s released; the ultimate screwing. It’s somewhat re-assuring to discover that despite the sad state of affairs in American politics (in which the rap sheets of the disgusting transgressions of our House and Congress would be longer than an unabridged dictionary) our friends across the pond are still able to find equally shitty, imbecilic assholes of their own to put in office.
Vishvesh
Aside from the fact that Jeffrey Archer is one of the many corrupt people in the world, who when imprisoned takes the liberty of shamelessly taking other prisoner’s stories, embellishes them with lots of drama and suspense, and earns some more money; this book in itself is pretty decent. What is sad though is the fact that out of 12 stories, only the 9 which were inspired by real life incidents were worth reading. “Don’t Drink the Water” and “The Alibi” were my personal favorite. The complexity of the plot, the minute details and the pacing was brilliant. It is the kind of story that leaves you with a huge smile on your smile because you feel that your time has been well spent. The other 7 stories varied from very interesting, to fairly decent to mind numbingly boring. The worst part was the 3 stories of Archer’s own creation. “In The Eye of the Beholder” especially catches your attention. I don’t usually swear much, but this is the kind of story that makes you think.Overall, this being my first Jeffrey Archer book, I am fairly impressed and perhaps I will read more of his works. Maybe his full length novels are better?
Jasmine
This is one of those tales that could have ended in about 5 spots. The difference with this one is that Archer acknowledges it! I think that’s infinitely clever. He tells a tricky little tale in which our anti-heroes have seemingly no choice except to do what they do, which is wrong, but…sometimes you can’t help it!I’m not sure why this is the title. This is the story of a man who is a criminal through and through, but is loved, for all that, by a good and wise woman. Maybe that’s it! Anyway, it made me sad on her behalf and I marveled at, not only her ability to forgive, but to accept and make allowances for his criminal tendencies without giving in to them herself.This had a sort of twist at the end, but otherwise it wasn’t very good and certainly not exciting.