Summary and Reviews of Archangel by Robert Harris

Media Reviews

National Review ...an exceptionally well written, skillfully crafted, continuously gripping thriller.

The New York Times Powerful, clever...delivers the thrills of Graham Greene. Will keep you on edge until its bizarre conclusion.

The New York Times - Christopher Lehmann-Haupt After finishing Archangel, when you think about what happens, you find it so outlandish as to defy credibility. But Harris makes you believe it as it's happening. What he does particularly well is evoke the atmosphere of contemporary Russia, not only the physical sense of it but also its threat of violent instability, the howling of its caged wolves.

The Economist Well-researched and skillfully observed, Archangel examines how Russia's uncompleted history--the "past that carries razors and pair of handcuffs"--continues to affect its attempt at free-market democracy. Underlying the story is the whispered issue of what makes Russia Russian.

Booklist - Gilbert Taylor Building on his accurate historical sense, Harris inveigles readers with intricate plotting and concrete descriptions of Russia's contemporary "look," rewarding them with a thoroughly thrilling tale.

Library Journal Among the many benefits of Russian glasnost has been the evolution of espionage fiction into a more cerebral form of international thriller. Archangel is a worthy example of how the history of modern Russia can be woven into a mesmerizing adventure yarn.

Publishers Weekly Sex, violence and violent sex all play a part in Harris's entertaining, well-constructed, intelligently lurid tale, which, along with his first two novels, places him squarely in the footsteps not of "Conrad, Green and le Carre," as the publisher would have it, but of Frederick Forsyth. And, like Forsyth, Harris has yet to write a novel without bestseller stamped on it - including this one.