The good guys here are Mossad, the CIA and their respective governments and the baddy is Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The latter has been served to Archer on a plate by a media eagerly seeking a viable alternative to Hitler.

The Gulf War was the last major conflict involving the Western Allies and the residual feeling - rather like World War II - that the apparent loser does not seem to have done too badly, is exploited to the full.

After all, then-president of the US, George Bush has been replaced, Baroness Margaret Thatcher deposed by her Conservative Party, and Mikhail Gorbachev removed by forces he ultimately could not control.

Eager to humiliate the Americans, and the newly-elected President Bill Clinton in particular, Saddam engages the help of a shadowy mafia-run special assignment group to steal the Declaration of Independence which he will burn in front of the world's press on July 4; Independence Day.

Once the reader has established that the first part of this dastardly operation has been completed, the suspense lies in speculating whether the plan will come to fruition.

Or will the forces of good triumph over the evil infidel? At the same time, the US is shaking hands with Israeli intelligence which, despite several failed attempts, seeks to assassinate an Iraqi president whose protection is as impenetrable as a fog on The Peak.

Characters include the college law professor who lectures to trainee spies as a side-line. Surprise, surprise, he wants to get out and do some field work.

Inevitably he meets and falls in love with a stunningly beautiful Mossad agent dropped into the Iraqi Interest Section of the Jordanian Embassy in Paris.

Someone is needed to produce a perfect forgery of a treasured document; enter a drink-sodden Irishman permanently inebriated on Guinness.

Meanwhile, Swiss bankers wear sober suits and are discreet and functionaries go about their business in the usual manner.

None of the main protagonists nor their supporting bit-players appear to be complicated characters and if some of their one-liners sound like unintentional self-parody then this merely serves to confirm that they teeter on the edge of verisimilitude.

The action, such as it is, lurches from the US to Iraq via Paris and Scandinavia for the five months preceding the fateful day at a speed unlikely to trouble the slower reader and a level of complexity almost designed to suit the chapter-at-bedtime brigade.

There are a number of clever jokes and some witty wordplay, but Archer knows that taxing twists of plot are more likely to be diverting irritations than welcome diversions.

His out-pourings lack the thoroughness of Len Deighton, the perspicacity of Robert Leeson and the power of Tom Clancy, yet the combination of steady pace, basic dialogue and minimal characterisation has an appeal difficult to define.

Even his most ardent critics grudgingly admit that, while his writing lacks literary rigour or any discernible style, he does spin a good yarn.

His undemanding prose and patient unravelling of plot strands create an irresistible momentum encouraging readers to frantically turn the pages - either to check that the predictability must be a smoke-screen, or that they simply like tackling a none too arduous mystery.

Archer and his publishers certainly know their market and have fashioned another highly readable and entertaining piece drawing on the author's sense of the ridiculous - stimulated no doubt by his earlier career at Westminster.

Now he is a life peer he can afford to be more regal in his approach. Looking for a friendly holiday read? This may fit the bill.