A Prisoner Of Birth – Jeffrey Archer

Jeffrey Archers ‘A Prisoner Of Birth‘ pays homage to Alexander Dumas classic adventure tale ‘The Count Of Monte Cristo‘ and it is safe to say Dumas fans will not be disappointed! ‘A Prisoner Of Birth‘ tells the story of four friends from Cambridge University (who refer to themselves as the ‘three musketeers’) and their plan to frame their friend Danny Cartwright for the murder of Danny’s brother in law to be Bernie Wilson. Danny ends up facing a twenty-two year long life sentence in a maximum security prison, ‘Belmarsh’, but ends up being lucky enough to share his cell with Sir Nicholas Moncrieff, who teaches him to read and write. Danny manages to escape by impersonating him and begins his plot to exact revenge on the people who wronged him.

This book has been fantastically written and it is clear that Archer himself has used some of his own first hand experience to describe the prison life. This brings a great amount of realism to the story. You are on the side of Danny all the way through and are constantly waiting to see what happens to him next.

It is mainly due to the excitement and adventure in this book that makes it translate so well to audio book form. Roger Allam, once again, does a fantastic job at narrating, always making sure that each character is enhanced with different vocal patterns and inflections. It is due to this that the story begins sounding like a whole cast of people rather than just one man and Allam definitely does Archer’s book justice. The unabridged version also includes an interview with Jeffrey Archer about A Prisoner of Birth.

A Prisoner Of Birth audio book (16 hours and 26 minutes in duration) is available to download now to your iPod, Mp3 Player, Computer or CD.