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“A matter of Honour” is one of Jeffery Archer’s best novel, and one of the best “chase” stories ever. The plot centers around the inheritance of Adam Scott, an unemployed ex-military man’s inheritance and the race across Europe, as the antagonists, the foreign agents of KGB try to take the inheritance from the protagonist.
Adam’s father bequeaths a letter asking him to open the letter only if a matter of family honour came up. Adam opens up the letter when the family honour comes up, and realizes that the value of the inheritance far exceeds the monetary value attached to it. The item is a Russian Orthodox icon that came to the possession of one Hermann Goring, who gifted it to Adam Scott’s father, one of the jailers of Nuremberg, in return for his kind treatment. The icon contains the only official Russian copy to the treaty by which the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. The purchase was apparently not a purchase but a 99-year lease akin to the British hold on Hong Kong, with a right of return to Russia. The deadline is only days away and the KGB desperately wants to retrieve the codicil from Adam Scott, and the hair raising chase begins.