Saturday, July 14, 2007

Not a Penny {More/Less} - Jeffrey Archer's First Novel

"Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less" is the first novel from Jeffrey Archer, one of the greatest story tellers of this modern time. This story is about a criminal who uses share market to cheat people and earn millions of dollars. In one of such occasions he messes up with a great mathematician, Stephan who invest about $250, 000 and becomes penniless. Not like other people who regret for losing, he wants to take revenge on the criminal, Harvey. Stephan later finds that there are three more people, who do not know each other mutually, who have invested a great amount of money.

With little investigation he finds the other three people to be an art dealer Jean-Pierre, a doctor Robin and a land lord, James who wishes to become an actor. Some how he manages to co-ordinate a meeting with all the three and they four decides to cheat Harvey and get all their money back, not a penny more; not a penny less. Though this is some what dramatic, to have mutually unknown persons meet up and agree to take revenge on an expert in swindling, it is acceptable; after all, anyone could be brain washed.

Everyone except James comes with a plan that could get some money from Harvey; when James meets a stunningly gorgeous a-typical-most-beautiful-girl-in-novels and falls in love with her at the first sight. When everyone dies to device a plan to get their money back, James devices plans to attract her and date with her, and like everyone else, he succeeds in his mission.

All the four of this team take part in others' plan and they somehow manage to get 3/4 of their total money loss; only missing the James part of contributing his 1/4 of the money. And James becomes the hero of the novel by an extra-ordinary twist in the end and he manages to get his team his contribution. There are more good news in the ends and the novel ends with a happy ending.

A good novel which is worth of the time spent in reading that. Though all the three plans are somewhat guessable, the twists and turns that happens when the plans are executed and how they fail because of lack of contingency plans and how they recover quickly from that are interesting. So, if possible read this novel and share your comments.

1 comment:

rohit said...

Must be an enjoyable read Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer. loved the way you wrote it. I find your review very genuine and orignal, this book is going in by "to read" list.