Kane & Abel

Combining the inside boardroom politics of The Moneychangers with the scope and emotional force of the Immigrants, Kane & Abel is a compelling tale of power, jealousy, and terrible revenge. At its center are two men, from widely different backgrounds. whose relentless ambition and driving passions are overshadowed only by their obsession with destroying each other.

Already a best seller in England (where it has been hailed as "the novel of the decade"), Kane & Abel spans more than sixty tumultuous years—from to the late — and revolves around William Lowell Kane, a millionaire financier, and Abel Rosnovski (born Wladek Koskiewicz), a Polish immigrant who rises to become the head of a vast hotel empire.

They are both born in 1906. Kane—bright, worldly, and industrious—is a descendant of the Lowells and Cabots, a Boston Brahmin, a member of an old and respected banking family. Abel is dis- covered newborn in a Polish forest, adopted by a trapper's family, and is soon taken in by the wealthy Baron Rosnovski. Abel possesses all of Kane's attributes except...opportunity.

Consumed by ambition —Kane to surpass the financial feats of his father, Abel to make up for an early life of deprivation —each pursues his own road to success. Kane, his corporate strategy and clipped way of speech polished to a fine edge at Harvard, makes his first million in the stock market, becomes a director of his father; hank. and marries a beautiful socialite who provides just the right touch of social grace he has previously not had time for. Abel, his raw courage and cunning learned in the prison camps of Siberia and in the dark alleys of Odessa, begins a classic immigrant's rags-to-riches story, starting as a waiter at the Plaza Hotel, going to night school, getting his first break, living the good life, marrying a Polish immigrant, and, more than anything, craving public acclaim.. ..

Surrounded by a host of people who both be- friend and deceive them, Kane and Abel, through a series of events, develop a personal hatred for each other, setting the stage for a confrontation that rocks the financial community—and the country—by its force and leads to a conclusion that is ironic, tragic, and shocking.

Rich with characters and with a marvelous sense of the times in which they lived, Jeffrey Archer's new novel is a triumphant work of fiction. --jacket