The Eleventh Commandment, by Jeffrey Archer HarperCollins, £16.99 in UK
What can one say about Jeffrey Archer's latest offering? I'm reminded of the television ad for the grunge group, where the promoter says that they can't sing, can't play and look terrible, then follows the condemnation with the remark that they'll go far.
In Archer's case, he can't write grammatical English, his characters are cardboard cut-outs and his dialogue is as multi-layered as a sod of turf. Yet he too has, indisputably, gone far.
So, what's his secret? Well, the secret probably is that there is no secret. You get what you expect. The majority of the reading public does not wish to be poked and prodded by the rapier tip of intellectual discussion, nor do folk on boats, trains, aeroplanes and holiday beaches want to be forced into thinking too deeply about life, destiny and all that jazz.
They simply desire entertainment, to be lulled into equanimity by the literary equivalent of a Cuba Libre in a tall glass, the sound of the surf on a beach at evening time, the hot, waxed stare of the sun, and the prospect of a sound sleep when day is done.
It is the very ordinariness of Archer's talent that gives it its strength. His characters may operate on an international stage and may achieve remarkable feats of derring-do, but in the midst of all that bland prose there is the shrill small voice in the reader's mind which insists: "I could do that".
Not that he or she ever will, of course, for this is escapism; but it is escapism with feet firmly encased in the hobnailed boots of the common man, rather than in the ballet slipper of the superhero.
And then again, there is the fact that all of Archer's books are completely story-driven. They are based in an oral tradition of tales told around the fireside on scary winter evenings. What happens next? That's the be-all and the end-all. Turn the page. Keep turning. Jack and Jill went up the hill . . . Then what happened? Did they fall? Did they survive? Did they live happily ever after?
In this latest offering, the hero is fiftyish Connor Fitzgerald, on the surface a businessman but really a super-assassin for the CIA. The story opens with him polishing off a Colombian drug-boss, then rapidly shunts him off to Russia to do likewise for an equally troublesome extremist politician named Zerimski - no relation, obviously, to the real Zhirinovski.
The US President, one Tom Lawrence, is attempting to guide an arms-reduction Bill through Congress, so the prospect of a mad militarist president ruling Russia is too daunting to contemplate. At the same time Lawrence cannot be seen to be giving the nod to removing him with extreme prejudice, so the operation must be of the most covert nature.
This means that Fitzgerald - what a Cracker! - is on his own and must survive under his own steam. Which leads to a series of escapades that bear comparison with the follyer-uppers of Saturday afternoon matinees in the old Cinema Palace of my youth. Remember Flash Gordon, Don Winslow of the Navy, The Clutching Hand? Ah, me.
While Fitzer is being shelled, shocked and just about sidelined in Russia, President Lawrence becomes locked in combat with the Director of the CIA, a formidable woman named Baxter, who sucks enemies in like bubble-gum and blows them out in bubbles. Can this be a sly formulation of J. Edgar Hoover in a dress?
The upshot of all this is that this reviewer, while coming to sneer, has remained to, well, not exactly cheer, but at least to give credit where it's due. Archer has promised that, if he's elected London's first voted-in mayor, he'll refrain from writing books. Whereas this will inspire quite a few to vote for him, there will be an awful lot of others who will go for his rival candidates.
Vincent Banville is a writer and critic