In an age where crown jewels serve as a euphemism at best for most, British bestselling writer and one-time Tory politician Jeffrey Archer tries to weave a thriller around their theft, almost like a post-Brexit ’wanna be’ clamouring to be let into the heist hall of fame. The heist genre has celebrated everything from robbing Fort Knox to the Royal Mint of Spain, the latter in Netflix’s wildly popular Money Heist.
If Archer, an established master of the racy airport paperback genre, is trying to compete with Netflix and its ilk for passenger eyeballs during a flight, Traitors Gate is probably not the right offering. Make no mistake, the premise is mighty beguiling—about a thief who orchestrates an elaborate heist of the crown jewels. ‘Traitor’s Gate’ refers to the water gate entrance to the Tower of London, which had a rather ironic dual role of housing criminals as well as safeguarding the royal crown, orb, sceptre, and other invaluable state treasures. Putting criminals and treasures under one roof—would that be British irony at work?
However, in Archer’s supposed thriller, it is not the prisoners (they aren’t there anymore) who dare to pull it off, but an ex-prisoner and master criminal Miles Faulkner. He tries to do the impossible— steal the crown jewels while they are being taken to the Buckingham Palace for the Queen to wear while delivering her annual state address to the British Parliament. (The story is conveniently set in the late 1990s, with more than one sarcastic reference, and one glaring factual error, about Princess Diana).
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