I’ll say it right up front: ONLY TIME WILL TELL by Jeffrey Archer is a don’t-miss-it novel, the first in a series that will continue the story of the Harry Clifton family and the Barringtons. It will make you anxious to read the next installment.

Harry is growing up without a father. He died when Harry was just a year old, but Harry doubts the cause of death that everyone gives him—a war injury. This is the novel’s first mystery.

A child with a “voice of an angel,” Harry receives a choral scholarship to a school attended by rich boys and encounters so much snobbery and mistreatment he runs away. But, at the urging of “Old Jack,” the mysterious man who lives in an old train carriage, Harry returns in time for breakfast.

He does become good friends with two boys at school. One, Giles Barrington, is the son of Hugo Barrington, Harry’s dead father’s former employer. Hugo Barrington is ONLY TIME WILL TELL’s bad guy.

The book is told in parts, each part a different character’s point of view. In this way, we learn more and more. And the mysteries surrounding different characters are cleared up or built up.

ONLY TIME WILL TELL follows Harry, his mother, “Old Jack,” and the Barringtons from 1920 to World War II . At each stage, we see how far Harry’s mother will go to see that he attends the best schools and wants for nothing and how far Hugo Barrington will go to see that Harry does not attend the best schools and is unsuccessful.

Family sagas such as this book can be overly long and boring, especially for readers who enjoy books of thrills and suspense. I’m betting, though, that even those readers will love ONLY TIME WILL TELL. What saves it is Archer’s style. By telling the story from different character’s points of view, he keeps adding mysteries and solving them, building suspense by way of Hugo Barrington and the limping former policeman he employs. Still, this is a family saga, not a thriller.

Also, Archer’s method, telling the story from various points of view, rounds out his characters. You’ll love some of them and care about them. So, even though the last part of the book is predictable and, I think, a little corny, you’ll still hate to see the book end. Your consolation is remembering that, while this book ends, the story continues.

Quite engaging, with likable/memorable characters, dramatic, and immensely readable. All of our book club members enjoyed the read, which does not often happen. In fact, many went out and got the next book in The Clifton Chronicles, Sins of the Father, to read independently!

I had read this first installment the year before but found everything about this book to be forgettable except the resolve not to read anything else by this writer.