Be Careful What You Wish For was published by Macmillan in 2014. The Barrington shipping line faces a hostile takeover bid while Harry Clifton, now an established author, becomes involved in the campaign to free Anatoly Babakov, a Soviet dissident whose unpublished novel has been smuggled out of the USSR. The parallel storylines — corporate warfare and Cold War cultural politics — represent the two faces of 1960s power: financial and ideological.
The Dissident Theme
Harry Clifton’s campaign for Babakov echoes real campaigns for Soviet dissidents — Solzhenitsyn, Sharansky, Sakharov — that were a defining feature of Cold War cultural politics. Archer’s treatment of the intellectual’s obligation to speak for the silenced gives the series its moral dimension, balancing the corporate-warfare plot with questions of conscience.
Collecting Be Careful What You Wish For
First edition (Macmillan, London, 2014): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine in dust jacket: $15–$25
- Very good: $8–$15
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation. Part of the Clifton Chronicles set.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does each Clifton Chronicles book end on a cliffhanger? Yes — except the final volume, This Was a Man. Archer deliberately structured each book to end mid-crisis, a technique borrowed from serialised Victorian fiction. The cliffhangers drove high pre-order numbers for each successive volume.
How many copies has Jeffrey Archer sold worldwide? Over 275 million copies across all his novels and short story collections. He is one of the bestselling British authors of all time, with translations into over 100 languages.