Jeffrey Archer
Nothing Ventured
I’m currently grappling with some very deep and challenging topics, so needed a little light relief and an escape from brain overload and emotional tension. Jeffrey Archer ticked all the boxes and Nothing Ventured – the first of his William Warwick series – has proved both undemanding and distracting. Oh, and with a nice line in humour. Just what the doctor ordered.
It’s billed as ‘not a detective story, but a story about a detective’. DC William Warwick is the product of an expensive private education, with a degree in Art History, and a lifelong yearning and determination to be a police detective. His father is an eminent judge and his sister a successful barrister, but William does his best to hide these facts from his fellow officers; he wants to advance on his own merits alone. What he’s less able to hide are his privileged ‘choirboy’ credentials.
Having been very successfully mentored by an excellent near-retirement sergeant on the beat and given invaluable practical advice, William is devastated when Fred is killed in the line of duty while they are out on the streets, and he is himself wounded in the same incident. But by this time his own innate abilities are all too obvious and he is fast tracked to Scotland Yard into the Art and Antiques Squad.
With his background in Art History he’s uniquely qualified to join a team investigating the theft of priceless masterpieces by the great artists, and the clever replication of certain special pieces. When he falls in love with Beth Rainsford, a girl from the Fitzmolean Museum from where one great work was stolen seven years earlier, he also gets embroiled in her personal campaign to free her father, Arthur, from prison where he is serving time for murder. William becomes a key player in both cases, and both his father, Sir Julian Warwick, and his sister, Grace, are instrumental in defending Arthur’s innocence.
When the mastermind behind the theft of paintings is apprehended, both his case and the review of Arthur Rainsford’s case come to court at the same time. Archer skilfully has us dipping back and forth into Court 22 and Court 14, following the arguments in each case, eyes flicking from the immobile faces of the experienced judges, to the reactions of counsel as they score or lose points, to the concentration of the jury, to the sneer on the face of the man in the dock.
Fred Yates’ advice to a rookie PC Warwick at the outset of his career is: ABC – Accept nothing. Believe no one. Challenge everything. And that’s what we need to do with this book. Archer is brilliant at weaving a clever plot and keeping us guessing till the end which way the courts will swing. Nothing Ventured filled this brief very satisfactorily.