The Sins of the Father
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the international bestseller Only Time Will Tell, Jeffrey Archer picks up the sweeping story of the Clifton Chronicles with The Sins of the Father.
Only days before Britain declares war on Germany, Harry Clifton, hoping to escape the consequences of long-buried family secrets, and forced to accept that his desire to marry Emma Barrington will never be fulfilled, has joined the Merchant Navy. But his ship is sunk in the Atlantic by a German U-boat, drowning almost the entire crew. An American cruise liner, the SS Kansas Star, rescues a handful of sailors, among them Harry and the third officer, an American named Tom Bradshaw. When Bradshaw dies in the night, Harry seizes on the chance to escape his tangled past and assumes his identity.
But on landing in America, he quickly learns the mistake he has made, when he discovers what is awaiting Bradshaw in New York. Without any way of proving his true identity, Harry Clifton is now chained to a past that could be far worse than the one he had hoped to escape.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his sequel to Only Time Will Tell, Archer continues the Clifton Chronicles with another heavily plot-driven story that has little to hold on to in terms of character development or writing style. The novel begins hastily with Englishman Harry Clifton meticulously detailing his experiences in the American prison where he landed as a result of recently switching identities in 1939 with Lt. Tom Bradshaw, who died on the cruise liner that had rescued Clifton after his merchant marine ship was sunk by a U-boat, and who just happens to have been charged with murder. Meanwhile, the mother of Harry's child and love of his life, Emma Barrington, crosses the Atlantic as a ship's receptionist, hoping to glean information on Harry's whereabouts, but without much feeling or deeply rooted motivation. As Harry accepts his fate as an inmate and Emma continues her search, the narrative rotates between one too many characters before winding back to Harry and Emma. Finally, a last-minute cliffhanger foreshadows the continuation of the story in book three of the five-part series, though Harry's one-dimensional (albeit fast-paced) adventure in this volume does little to make subsequent Clifton Chronicles seem worthwhile. 300,000 announced first printing.
