A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer
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Book Reviews of A Prisoner of Birth
Book Review: A page turner
Summary: 4 Stars
Archer's A Prisoner of Birth certainly will hold your interest from page one. He's good at that. It's a problem solving book which also provides background on the British legal and court system. Don't look for any deep understanding of the human condition. Archer is not a philosopher just a good story teller. Archer also comes up with a plausible ending which many current popular writers cannot do.Book Review: As a new reader of Archer, Awesome Read!
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm always on the lookout for a new author that can throw down an entertaining an fast paced story. This one's got it all! I highly recommend this story for everyone at there that loves to see the hero get justice and enjoys reading a book that will completely hold your attention from cover to cover.Book Review: Low Suspense Factor & Long
Summary: 3 Stars
Writing: Unadorned
Plot: Easy To Follow
Suspense Factor: Almost None
Entertainment Value: Medium
First and foremost, "A Prisoner of Birth" is long. If you can make it through the long opening court scene, you'll have an idea that this novel stretches out its plot points. I think Jeffrey Archer wanted to write something that feels as long to read as Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo." He succeeded. This isn't James Patterson country. It's Charles Dickens. The writing is plain, spare. The verbiage is unadorned. It's pure story. The suspense is almost non-existent. We know that unfairly prosecuted Danny Cartwright will exact revenge. The plotting is clever, however, and the question becomes how he'll manage it and what kind of obstacles he'll have to overcome to pull it off. If you buy that Danny can slip into the life of a fellow prisoner and if you can buy that he is released on parole in the dead prisoner's name, you'll have no problem swallowing the rest.
Once he's out of the inescapable Bellmarsh prison, it's all about Cartwright's effort to set up the revenge. What follows is a long series of conversations (note--not action sequences) involving collector postage stamps, wills, passports, death certificates, bank accounts and a missing key. This section is mostly talk and scheming. There are lots of meetings and some land dealings in the run-up to the 2012 U.S. Olympics in London. And, since it's England, there is plenty of "Lord Chancellor" and "My Lord" that.
There is another long courtroom battle at the end it's plenty slick and neatly crafted.
Too long? For my tastes, by a couple hundred pages or so.
Fun ride nevertheless? In the "light entertainment" category, yes.
Book Review: COUNT ON ENJOYING THIS BOOK
Summary: 3 Stars
By his own admission, Jeffrey Archer's A Prisoner of Birth is a modern day tale of revenge and self-reinvention that borrowed from and relied heavily on Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo. For this reader it appears that Archer was inspired by more than one author. Prisoner also smacks of other Dumas works as well as G. B. Shaw's Pygmalion (My Fair Lady) and a previous Archer tome titled "Not a penny more, Not a penny less".
SUMMARY: A man from the wrong side of the tracks (Danny Cartwright) is convicted and imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit based on the false testimony of four supposedly upright individuals (Musketeers) from the right side of the tracks. While in prison he is schooled in etiquette and the kings English by a fellow cellmate (Sir Nicholas Montcrieff). Danny is not only a willing and amazingly astute Eliza to the Nicholas's Henry Higgins, he also possesses the street smarts that Nicholas lacks.
Through an unbelievable set circumstances (which I will not discuss lest it spoil the pleasure of other Prisoner readers) Danny is able to plot his revenge against his accusers and dispense his own particular brand of justice.
Even though you've undoubtedly come across many variations of this plot before, you will find that Archer's skill with the written word will make the 500+ pages of Prisoner fly by. 3 1/2 STARS
Book Review: Starts great, then becomes predictable and average
Summary: 3 Stars
This one really hooked me at the beginning. I was telling my wife after the first disc (I listened to audio version) that she needed to read this. By the 3rd or 4th disc (of 13), my enthusiasm for the story had begun to seriously wane; it's as though Mr. Archer started with full creative powers, and then made a decision to mail it in. The characters, language, and conversations all become trite and predictable. And there is very little shading to the characters - each one is either a pillar of his society or the blackest villain to ever populate the earth...no in-between. The book does however create its own momentum, and so though increasingly disappointed, I did get to the end. At the end, there are a couple of plot/logic holes that made me a bit disgusted that I had continued. If you decide to read this, see if you can spot them - they both occur when the chief villain is in court on the stand being questioned by Sir Matthew, and have to do with incompleteness of the scenarios setup by the lawyer for how the murder and wounding had occurred, and the inability of the witness to see a question coming that anyone of the witness' intelligence would have prepared for...