A Prisoner of Birth

by Jeffrey Archer

Macmillan £18.99, pp531

Part of Jeffrey Archer's latest doorstopper is set in Belmarsh high-security prison, where he was briefly incarcerated. It tells the story of Danny Cartwright, framed for a murder. As the title suggests, this injustice is presented as a question of upbringing. But Archer's critique of the class system dies stillborn, suffocated by his inability to recognise the difficulty - for everyone else, at least - of reinvention from the ground up.

Cartwright escapes from Belmarsh, disguised as fellow inmate Sir Nicholas Moncrieff. Under Nick's tutelage, he has learnt to read and speak like wot proper types do. Now, with a smart haircut, he's ready for anything. After his escape, Danny settles into Nick's aristocratic lifestyle. A Prisoner of Birth is explicitly based on The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas's masterpiece presents the true cost of reinvention, in all its painful unrootedness. But Archer suggests, with a bit of chutzpah and a lack of scruples, you can go a long way. Finishing this novel, the reader still looks at Jeffrey and asks: at what price?