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What a splendid, exciting, and enjoyable read. 4.5 stars with the tension, pace, linear continuity to our narrator's experience of being the ghost writer for a former British Prime Minister's memoir. This prime voice/mind/"eyes" of supreme dilemma/sprightly traveling plot is never given a full name during the entire book. Robert Harris has Adam, the center of this world and the book, just calling him "man". As in, "hand me that, man" or "thanks, man". What a superb insight! Although he (our ghostwriter) holds the entire cognition for the life, the plot, the surrounding context picture- he is truly only a Ghost. Invisible and nameless to any public exposure. Or to any publishing celebration party on the date of sale. No, beyond that, to anyone at all who "matters". He's just a conduit, a funnel or a tunnel -a pipeline for forming words. Words with which, unfortunately, might leak some past or long forgotten facts associated with various Lang youth tales. Inconveniently to other parties in that past being an unfortunate side effect?

Loved this read. And will read all of his. And all are so different from each other! I can't wait to see how contrived and complex he places these kinds of facades and marketing within ancient Rome. Honestly, even at this early point, I am going to award Richard Harris the award for "street smart" word craft accuracy. His characters are the opposite from slow, unintelligent, or slyly crafty without being a wit naive. They seem so real, so ordinary to the modern norm, and yet so layered. And with his word nuance it happens so quickly too.

Adam Lang is the former Prime Minister. With super ties to American elites of nearly every celeb or politico. Cambridge good fellow and then coupled with the power behind the throne of his clever, clever wife, Ruth.

So why did the former ghostwriter have such a fate of most dire and pathetic outcome?

And how does the reader know the core of our Ghost, his feelings, his reactions, his wants and needs and most of all his fears- so quickly? Skill. Robert Harris entrenches you within the culture, the ambiance of their top rung elite private airplane of numerous locations, nearly instantly. Not overlong. It moves, moves, moves. And without the usual violence ratio for a thriller, spy, politico, or policing ensemble, either. Tension, question, darting looks, tension, question. So much is revealed as is concealed.

I had to look up the publication date twice, I found Harris's foreseeing skills incredible. Mine says 2007. So this book is nearly 10 years old. He holds some savvy for vast waving tides of worldview "eyes" on top of his writing style expertise. It is written as books of this genre were written before 2000, as well. No alternating time periods, flip flopping narrator ages or multiple voice ping-ponging. Just straight tension, pressured pace, serendipity to where the narrator is going in real time, even for his own knowledge or choice miasma!

Fabulous ending. I wanted a bit more about the Ruth of after. But then I might have had to learn our Ghost's name or had him not end it with those last comments.

Highly recommend for a fun read, with deep intrinsic psychological coloring, also holding savvy, savvy eyes to the media, politico worlds of the present modern. He must have a finely tuned intelligence to that aspect, or a compass supreme for the public's tolerance levels from chiding know betters.