The Ghost

A Novel

By: Robert Harris

Narrated by: Roger Rees

From the bestselling author of Fatherland and Imperium comes The Ghost Writer, an extraordinarily auspicious thriller of power, politics, corruption, and murder—now a major motion picture starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan.

The role of a ghostwriter is to make his client look good, not to uncover the truth. But what happens when the client is a major political figure, and the truth could change the course of history? Adam Lang, the controversial former prime minister of Britain, is writing his memoirs. But his first ghostwriter dies under shocking circumstances, and his replacement—whose experience lies in portraying aging rock stars and film idols—knows little about Lang’s inner circle. Flown to join Lang in a secure house on the remote shores of Martha’s Vineyard in the depths of winter, cut off from everyone and everything he knows, he comes to realize he should never have taken the job.

It’s not just his predecessor’s mysterious death that haunts him, but Adam Lang himself. Deep in Lang’s past are buried shocking secrets. Secrets with the power to alter world politics. Secrets with the power to kill.©2007 Robert Harris; (P)2007 Simon and Schuster Inc.

CIA as villain

The story is intriguing, if rather harsh on the CIA. The reading would be excellent, except for the reader's propensity to avoid pronouncing the final s in so many words. These include not only plural words, but also simple ones like "us" and "was". Apparently he thinks it would sound elegant. It doesn't; it sounds ridiculous.