I mainly resist using this blog to promote individual titles or authors. That's not what blogs are for IMHO but a comment here a couple of days ago has tempted me to write about Cat o' nine tales by Jeffrey Archer. The comment from an excellent independent bookseller said how pleased he is NOT to be selling books by Archer. I've never worked in a bookshop but I reckon I'd be pleased to be selling books by anyone.

Of course there are many people who have decided that Jeffrey Archer's prison sentence (one of the longest ever handed down for perjury) was not enough of a punishment for his crime (no violence involved, no theft, no damage to an individual apart from himself). This is probably because people simply don't like success combined with a lack of shyness but that's not justification for unrelenting vilification and censorship.

Outside Britain people see Jeffrey simply as a writer and his popularity is growing with every book he publishes. His latest book of short stories augmented by the world's greatest illustrator Ronald Searle is a case in point. I notice on Jeffrey's blog someone asking when he could buy a copy here in Mumbai. Here in India they care not a jot for British Archer-baiting. They just want good books from a brilliant story-teller. Try it out for yourself before sounding off, my bookseller friends.