A sneak peak into Kane & Abel--Jeffrey Archer

The book dates back to pre-first world war era,in a small town in Poland,where a child discovers or rather delivers a newborn from an ailing mother who dies in childbirth.Mistaking it for a new animal his family could eat,the child brings the new born into his family,where his mother readily accepts him as the ninth member of the family,calling him Wladek.As fate would have it ,one day the baron of the city adopts him to offer "competition"to his son in studies. A thousand miles away a son is born to a rich family of bankers in united states, christened William Kane.Both these children live completely different lives,one in riches of the bankers’ family,while the other has to live in dungeons of his own castle during the siege of war saw by Russians.Wladek’s world is shattered when the baron dies after being held captive in his own castle for nearly four years,while William loses his father to titanic. While Wladek migrates to U.S. illegally,William can already be seen fidgeting with hundreds of dollars in his ledger book.Their lives run critically parallel to each other , until one day they cross paths.After a strange turn of events which deals with what is called the "period of depression" of ’thirties.Wladek ,now called Abel Rosnovski,who is the manager of a defunct hotel which is mortgaged to kane’s bank holding William Kane responsible for all his misfortunes ,swears to destroy kane ,a man who holds the chair to one of the biggest banks in U.S. The sequence of events that turn up after this, as well as the description of world war 2 ,when the two men meet once again has been dealt with possibly in the best manner by Archer. the book is descriptive enough to the extent of a moving picture but has the same pace,though. The end a rather critical one ,is agreeable at the same time.

Strong points : powerful narration.fast paced,sensitive handling of matters

Flip side : the author seems to have taken a leaf out of Hindi movies, about the rivals’
children to fall in love with each other and marry against their wishes.The world isn't
that small,or is it?