A Prisoner of Birth - Jeffrey Archer

One of the latest works from Archer before he started with “The Clifton Chronicles”, “A Prisoner of Birth” could be said to be Archer’s tribute to Alexandre Dumas’s “The Count of Monte Cristo”, the epic saga of the fight between Good versus Evil. It can also be said to be Archer’s most commercial work in recent years.

“A Prisoner of Birth” is no less than a saga. Divided into five different parts, “The Trial”, “Prison”, “Freedom”, “Revenge” and “Redemption”, each part is as entertaining and well narrated as the other. The events are placed beautifully into the entire narrative making it unpredictable. One of the more interesting aspects of the books are also the unique relations each of the characters develop during the progress of the story, especially that of Danny Cartwright and Nick Moncrieff, eventually leading to the unthinkable, think like Danny, behave like Nick. Another of the unique relations drawn up is that between Danny and Alex Redmayne, the Lawyer who defends Danny.

The Most interesting part of the book is of course, the “Prison” part. The Belmarsh prison has been beautifully described here in with detailed account of the entire internal functioning. Perhaps, it was the first of its kind in an Archer Novel, where such a sizable portion was allocated to events inside the prison. Creative liberties have obviously been taken in execution of certain events but those were perfectly acceptable given the basic theme of the story.

The character of “Beth Wilson”, Danny’s love interest has been portrayed to perfection. It had been quite a few years before this book, when we really missed such a character in an Archer novel. The antagonists of the story have different shades among each of them, there being four of them, and each one have their own reasons and their own guilt, the main negative lead  character of “ Spencer Craig” is shown to be highly shrewd and cunning at times. Another of the negative one, “Lawrence Andrew Davenport, has a character which is very well written. It has both the shades of evil and guilt and an underlying sense of regret to his actions.

On reading this book, we are introduced to many interesting, rules and regulations with respect to prisoners who go out to live on parole. It is really appreciative of the British Constitution, which really gives such an opportunity to the inmates to start their lives fresh again. Also, interesting were the various legal laws in relation to property inheritance which forms an important part in the second half of the narrative.

The Revenge portion has been kept sweet and simple but really detailed and informative about lot of concepts.

 Personally, “A Prisoner of Birth” as a book is truly entertaining and highly commercial and it is a great tribute to the Classic. “The Count of Monte Cristo” meant for the Generation X and future readers. Creative liberties though there, it fits in well. It can also developed into a very interesting television series.

It was truly referred to as Archer’s best in many recent years on the solo novel front.