Probably the best thriller I’ve read in the last ten years, Harris’s story about a ghostwriter hired to pen the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister is both a gripping mystery and a thinly-veiled attack on Tony Blair and the legacy of Iraq.
The Lovereading view...
Harris is a brilliant thriller writer and the topicality of this book makes for an even better thriller full of twists turns and a real feeling of being in the inner circles of government.
The Ghost has now been made into a film due for release 16 April 2010.
‘The moment I heard how McAra died I should have walked away. I can see that now…’
The narrator of Robert Harris’s gripping new novel is a professional ghostwriter – cynical, mercenary, and with a nice line in deadpan humour. Accustomed to working with fading rock stars and minor celebrities, he jumps at the chance to ghost the memoirs of Britain’s former prime minister, especially as it means flying to the American resort of Martha’s Vineyard in the middle of winter and finishing the book in the seclusion of a luxurious house.
But it doesn’t take him long to realise he has made a terrible mistake. His predecessor on the project died in circumstances that were distinctly suspicious, and the ex-prime minister turns out to be a man with secrets in his past that are returning to haunt him – secrets with the power to kill.
'The Ghost is arguably the finest novel yet to have emerged from the so-called Age of Terror… This is an important book about the major issues of our time' Mail on Sunday
‘A master of the intelligent thriller…The Ghost is Harris back on sparkling form’ The Times
‘Harris has written a remarkable thriller… He knows how to tell a story’ Sunday Telegraph
Author
About Robert Harris
Robert Harris is the author of eight bestselling novels: Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium, The Ghost, Lustrum and The Fear Index. Several of his books have been filmed, most recently The Ghost, which was directed by Roman Polanski. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. He lives in the village of Kintbury, west Berkshire, with his wife Gill Hornby and a fluctuating number of children.
In 2014 he was inducted into the CWA Hall of Fame.
