Expected publication: October 24th 2017 by St. Martin’s Press
Read Date: October 3rd 2017
Pages: 227
Stars: 5/5
Nearly a decade after his last volume of short stories was published, Jeffrey Archer returns with his eagerly-awaited, brand-new collection TELL TALE, giving us a fascinating, exciting and sometimes poignant insight into the people he has met, the stories he has come across and the countries he has visited during the past ten years.
Find out what happens to the hapless young detective from Naples who travels to an Italian hillside town to find out Who Killed the Mayor? and the pretentious schoolboy in A Road to Damascus, whose discovery of the origins of his father’s wealth changes his life in the most profound way.
Revel in the stories of the 1930’s woman who dares to challenge the men at her Ivy League University in A Gentleman and A Scholar while another young woman who thumbs a lift gets more than she bargained for in A Wasted Hour.
These wonderfully engaging and always refreshingly original tales prove not only why Archer has been compared by the critics to Dahl and Maugham, but why he was described by The Times as probably the greatest storyteller of our age.
Tell Tale is collection of 13 historical, Fiction short stories. As it is said in the burb, some of the stories author has written based on real incidents he came across during his travel. All stories have few things in common which made the book real amazing.
Perfect title for each story which itself gave the hint of what I will expect in the story.
Drastic twisty ending- I couldn’t guess in most of the stories what will happen in the end. All stories kept thinking what will happen to character, who will be the culprit. Most of the stories had fair ending.
Determined and strong main character – all main characters in different stories were in different occupation and they were brilliant in that story. Even though the stories were short, I got to know all characters closely. I didn’t feel in any story that I was missing out something about the character or I couldn’t understand character’s action.
Conversation of this helpless young man with town people during investigations was so funny and mysterious. Loved he details of town and people there, the way misery of young officer was shown in the book. And my goodness that end! Just brilliant.
Few stories had beautiful first lines which showed the turning point in one line without giving away anything. This was one of that. This story proves that whatever you learned in life never goes to dumpster even though chose a different profession. It always helps to have knowledge. Guy’s second love of history of art helped him in his first love police detective.
Here is my most favorite story in whole book. This was the tale about struggle of female professor in the time period when women were not accepted as a professor and when people thought a woman cannot teach a man anything. Our strong lady professor Dr. Burbage did PhD on Shakespeare’s sonnet. And on her first lecture student decided to test her knowledge on whole canon by reading random scenes and asked for about play, act, and scene. That was a tough battle and Dr. Burbage answered them in smart and amazing way. Again mind blowing ending of the story. I simply loved this character.
I knew plays, as I have heard those stories or watched the movies but I never read anything by Shakespeare or know much about him or his work. Even though I enjoyed this story. Discussions about playwrights and debate on his work was brilliantly written that made me wish to read Shakespeare’s work. I felt like I don’t know anything about old literature. This story is for Shakespeare and literature lovers. Reader like me will also love this one.
” ‘How important is it to have good knowledge of the text,’
‘Most important, but not as important as being able to interpret the meaning of the words, so you have a better understanding of the text.’ ”
I never liked that Ralph dude in this story, if you know me you might know I’m highly against forced love and patronizing nature and that character had all of it to earn my dislike.
