Jeffrey Archer, who passed away at age 86 on Monday, was that rare writer whose page-turning fiction closely followed his own life’s wild swings. The son of a fraudster who became a British MP at 29, he quit politics after losing his fortune in a fraud. He staved off bankruptcy by writing bestsellers including Kane and Abel, and went on to sell at least 30 crore books through his life. But scandal dragged him down again—from the Tory leadership to a four-year jail sentence for perjury. If only he could keep his nose as clean as his fictional protagonist, ‘clean-sweep Ignatius’, an African minister who took utmost care to keep his black money safe. That’s a spoiler for the short story. But then, Archer’s life—which his work shadowed—was an open book.
