The Eleventh Commandment

"Thou shall not get caught, If caught thou shall not reveal any info about CIA. The CIA will always take care of its operatives"-----This is supposed to be the eleventh commandment according to Jeffrey Archer. Although I don't remember any of its ten earlier successors, thanks to the author I remember the eleventh :P.

It has been a long time since I sat down to read a novel. The last one being "The Kite Runner" read nearly 10 months back. So when I saw this book added into my brothers mini-library and being a great fan of fiction literatures, I had to get my hands on it. The only other book I had read from the same author was "Matter Of Honour" , read a long time back. This novel is nothing short of a Hollywood "masala" movie. But still I am not sure why this has not been made into a movie. Guess it projects the Russian President in a very bad light, but since when has Hollywood bothered about such trivial matters.

The novel starts with the Connor Fitzgerald a highly decorated CIA assassin executing a Colombian President candidate whose views against the USA was hostile. The chief character Connor is under the impression that this assassination is ordered by the highest authority of the country i.e the President of USA, but that was not to be the case. Enter Helen Dexter the Director Of CIA who is taking all the decisions on her own whims and making it look like it has been approved from the top. So when the heat builds up the President whose is in the first place, suspicious of the Directors role in the assassination orders that those guilty be brought to book.

Hence Helen hatches a plan to save her own skin and make Connor the scapegoat. He is again given an assignment to assassinate a facist Russian President hopeful again under the pretext that it came from the top. But it is actually a trap set up to get him captured, since anyway as a CIA operative he will be following the eleventh commandment. From this place onwards starts the roller coaster rides of ups and down which includes the Russian Mafya, the President of USA, President of Russia, the CIA and finally Connor making the five chief sides in this drama thriller.

Overall a good book which is worth a read a single time. If one is familiar to Dan Brown's style of  writing then they would surely like this novel. Fast paced , edgy and lots of twists and turns in between. The only complain which I have is the manner in which it is ended. Like a typical Hollywood potboiler. Looks like it was written keeping that in mind in the first place. The author probably had some multi-million dollar copyrights deal in mind :P.

Next Novel in progress "Kane and Abel" from the same author and it looks a lot more promising than the outnumbered commandment :P.