A Prisoner of Birth — My Review!

There is one sentence on the back cover of the book which i don’t agree with. It says “Jeffery Archer’s most powerful novel since Kane & Abel, with a cast of characters who will remain with you long after you’ve turned the last page” By no means is this the most powerful novel since Kane and Abel. Many more like ‘As the Crow Flies’, ‘The Prodigal Daughter’, ‘The Fourth Estate’ and ‘Shall we tell the president’ are much better reads.
Still, ‘A Prisoner of Birth’ is pretty good! It’s a powerful book alright, with quite a few memorable characters. I Guess the Prison Syndrome remained with Archer as the bulk of this book revolves around Prison life!! To put it short, think about ‘The Count of Monte Christo’ + ‘Not a penny more, Not a penny less’ and you have ‘A Prisoner of birth’
The story begins with a lot of excitement, where the Protagonist Danny Cartwright is imprisoned Wrongly for the murder of his best friend and meets Sir Nicholas Moncrieff in Prison. Archer leads us thru a colourful life in jail, with quite a few interesting characters, especially Big Al!
Thru a quirk of fate (which you must read), Danny comes out of Jail and how he takes revenge on the people who sent him in forms the rest of the story. Actually, it’s a story within a story — that of Sir Nick and it’s pretty engrossing too!
I won’t try to let you in to the plot (what i’ve said above, you will anyway know once you’ve read the blurb of the book) but will tell you this much — there are quite a few surprises and twists and turns in the story to keep you up till you finish it (I slept at 130!) and though the ending is not as shocking as the book claims, it is still Archerous!
It’s nice to see another fast paced thriller — Fiction from archer — after the prison series (which are good, but then…)
The edition i’ve read is a special one for the Indian Sub-Continent and the print should have been bigger.
Still, i guess i’ll rate it at 3.5/5
Hope Archer gives us another ‘Shall we tell the President’ soon!