by Janet Grischy

Created on: October 25, 2009

Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less was Jeffrey Archer's first book. A frothy entertainment, it never takes itself seriously. It tells the clever story of four respectable men who were defrauded in a stock scheme, and depicts their recovery and their revenge.

Harvey Metcalf, a self-made man, steps over a moral line. He pumps up the stock of an oil exploration company, and four honest men are robbed of money they could not afford to lose. Happening to meet, they agree to steal the money back.

They are Stephen Bradley, a popular professor at Oxford; Dr. Robin Oakley, a physician in private practice; Jean-Pierre Lamanns, a French art dealer; and James Brigley, the directionless heir to a British earldom. A model, beautiful of course, Anne Summerton, also appears in the story.

Each man comes up with a clever plan for regaining his own lost funds from the financier, except for the aristocrat James, who can't seem to think of a scam. They help one another with each scheme, and James is especially helpful to all. Meanwhile, the aristocrat has begun a romance with the beautiful model, and they begin to fall in love.

On the Riviera, the defrauded doctor charges Metcalf for a fake emergency operation. The French art dealer sells him a phony Van Gogh. The Oxford professor, who happens to be an American, extorts a huge "donation" from Harvey Metcalfe for what he has been led to believe is an honorary degree.

When three of the partners have recovered their funds from Harvey Metcalf, James invites them all to his wedding. It turns out that the woman he has been innocently courting happens to be Harvey's daughter, and the father's wedding gift to the couple brings each defrauded investor back to even. They celebrate, but then learn that oil has been discovered near the property of their formerly worthless company, and their holdings have soared in value. Now they have to find a way to give the money they have stolen back.

The book is charming, because it does not take itself seriously. It is full of catch phrases and running gags. It almost satirizes itself as it presents stock sketches of an aristocrat, an academic, a doctor and an art dealer.

The structure is straightforward, detailing each man's money-recovering caper in turn. Sprinkled through is an engaging light-hearted romance. This book is a wild fantasy, and proudly so. It relies on coincidence, blindness, and miraculous luck for its effects. It is a relic of a certain era, the 70s, and depicts quite clearly, the norms and values of that period. It's fun.

Not a Penny More is still available at Amazon, and may be in local bookstores too.

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