The old master of the airport bookstall novel has published for the last time. His fans will be delighted with this vintage Archer. The story concerns the lives of two children born on Armistice Day 1918 – Evelina to Charles, Earl of Brancaster, and Adam to a shepherd on the Brancaster estate.  The title echoes the blockbusting Kane and Abel with biblical resonance. The couple’s fortunes are charted to almost the end of the second world war. Adam and Eve fall deeply in love, Eve devoted to farming, Adam to the intellect. On the outbreak of war he is called to duty with the Royal Norfolk Regiment and is eventually awarded both the MC and the VC.

Although the writing carries us along at a great pace with many twists and turns, both style and plot are clichéd. There are many unbelievable coincidences and improbabilities. Characters ‘go their separate ways’ and situations ‘only end in tears’. The text is littered with trite quotations and old saws, including Edmund Burke’s about the triumph of evil if ‘good men do nothing’ and Shakespeare’s about how lazy gentlemen of England during war ‘shall think themselves accursed they were not here’. The presentation of the upper classes and the political world is a parody. As expected, there is a black sheep in the Brancaster family, Charles’s brother, who ends up at the baccarat table in a Mayfair club with the Prince of Wales.

This is a romantic historical novel of exaggerated proportion in ambition and length. The prelude to war is covered in detail; the rise of Hitler, the Berlin Olympics, the Abdication, the advent of Churchill on the political stage, Dunkirk and the accession of George VI. Recorded observation of events is immensely detailed and much research was clearly done. There are all the hallmarks of family saga romances, births, deaths, natural and otherwise, betrayals, treachery, great personal sacrifices, rifts and reconciliations.

It is not great literature, nor was it meant to be. Nevertheless, Archer’s novels have been enjoyed by millions. His achievement was astonishing and has to be admired. One must remember that Jeffrey Archer’s own life story was the stuff of a Jeffrey Archer novel.