Stories in this collection

The Chinese Statue
The Luncheon
The Coup
The First Miracle
The Perfect Gentleman
One-Night Stand
The Century
Broken Routine
Henry's Hiccup
A Matter of Principle
The Hungarian Professor
Old Love

Followers of my blog will have noticed a penchant for Jeffrey Archer short stories just recently.
That is simply because they are so good. Sometimes mystery, sometimes just simply quirky, all with marvellously drawn characters.

In this collection Archer says that 11 of the stories are based on known incidents and only one is totally the result of his own imagination. Each of them is 20-30 pages long. Just right for a bit of night time distraction.

My calculation now is that I have read at least 60 short stories by Archer and he really is the master. ( )

The short stories in this collection are all well-written - they each tell an interesting story with just the right amount of detail and no loose ends. The other fun thing about this collection is that each story has an unexpected or unlooked for ending. Probably my favorite stories would be "The Coup" and "Old Love" - though I didn't like the ending to that one much. I also enjoyed "The Perfect Gentleman". ( )

A dozen tales that are all lightly entertaining but none have the cleverness that is the hallmark of a good short story. The twists were either too obvious or too trite to be satisfying. ( )

A Quiver Full of Arrows by Jeffrey Archer (2005)