A Prisoner of Birth

A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer is a modern-day version of The Count of Monte Cristo.  Shortly after Danny Cartwright proposes to his pregnant girlfriend Beth, a barrister coerces him into a fight during which the barrister kills Danny’s best friend who is Beth’s brother.  The barrister frames Danny for the murder.  Danny is poor and illiterate and unable to refute the lies of the barrister’s friends who testify at the trial.  The jury convicts him of murder, and he goes to Belmarsh Prison in London.

There he shares a cell with Sir Nicholas Moncrieff, a wealthy, well-educated Scottish nobleman who teaches Danny to read and to talk like an aristocrat.  The two men look much alike, and a prisoner working for the barrister mistakes the two men and murders Sir Nicholas shortly before he is due for parole.  Danny assumes the nobleman’s identity and soon leaves the prison with the Moncrieff fortune and scores to settle.

The choice of Belmarsh Prison as the setting for the novel adds authenticity to the writing since the author spent time as an inmate there.  I hope to find time in the future to read A Prison Diary, Archer’s three-book series of diaries elaborating on life in various prisons where he experienced incarceration for “perjury” and for “perverting the course of justice.”