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Book Summary and Reviews of A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer

A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer

A Prisoner of Birth

by Jeffrey Archer

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  • Published:
  • Mar 2008, 512 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

If Danny Cartwright had proposed to Beth Wilson the day before, or the day after, he would not have been arrested and charged with the murder of his best friend. But when the four prosecution witnesses are a barrister, a popular actor, an aristocrat, and the youngest partner in an established firm’s history, who is going to believe your side of the story?

Danny is sentenced to twenty-two years and sent to Belmarsh prison, the highest-security jail in the land, from where no inmate has ever escaped.

However, Spencer Craig, Lawrence Davenport, Gerald Payne, and Toby Mortimer all underestimate Danny’s determination to seek revenge, and Beth’s relentless quest to pursue justice, which ends up with all four fighting for their lives.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Bestseller Archer pays homage to Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo in this delicious updating of the adventure classic." - Publishers Weekly.

"The characters are stereotypes and underfleshed; the ending is abrupt. Still, like other Archer thrillers, the book is compulsively readable: it will provide readers with many hours of relaxation." - Library Journal.

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Author Information

Jeffrey Archer Author Biography

Jeffrey Archer was born in London and brought up in Somerset. He was educated at Wellington School, and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was President of the University Athletics Club, and went on to run the 100 yards in 9.6 seconds for Great Britain in 1966.

After leaving Oxford he was elected to the Greater London Council, and three years later at the age of 29, he became Member of Parliament for Louth. After five years in the Commons and a promising political career ahead of him, he invested heavily in a Canadian company called Aquablast, on the advice of the Bank of Boston. The company went into liquidation, and three directors were later sent to jail for fraud. Left with debts of £427,727, and on the brink of bankruptcy, he resigned from the House of Commons.

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