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3rd out of 29 books
—
125 voters
A Prisoner of Birth
ONE NIGHT. TWO MEN. FOUR WITNESSES...
A MASTERPIECE OF SUSPENSE AND STORYTELLING.
"A storyteller in the class of Alexandre Dumas." --The Washington Post
International bestseller and master storyteller Jeffrey Archer is at the very top of his game in this story of fate and fortune, redemption and revenge.
If Danny Cartwright had proposed to Beth Wilson the day before, or the da
...moreHardcover, 501 pages
Published
March 4th 2008
by St. Martin's Press
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In an interview included in my edition of this book, James Archer (born 1940) said that this novel is a contemporary retelling of Alexander Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo. Since I have not read yet the said classic book, I checked its synopsis in Wikipedia. It seems that Archer did a good job by using the plot but making it current by putting his personal touch on it.
Among the different literary genres, I must admit that suspense thriller and romance are my least favorites. I love reading read...more
Among the different literary genres, I must admit that suspense thriller and romance are my least favorites. I love reading read...more
I finally decided to give four stars only because the justice and the fairness play such an important part of the novel. The legal discourse is superb, and the presentation of the life in prison seems plausible, and most importantly, it is a novel with a very significant literary reminiscence.
It is definitely a book written by a Conservative, and as a liberal, you constantly pick up the clues and the messages that go against your convictions. But (I hate the conjunction at the beginning of the...more
It is definitely a book written by a Conservative, and as a liberal, you constantly pick up the clues and the messages that go against your convictions. But (I hate the conjunction at the beginning of the...more
Wow! I felt like a 13 year old reading the final installment of Harry Potter. Other than bathroom breaks and a quick dinner, I did not put this book down. Jeffrey Archer is a master with characters, twists and storys within storys. I am going to write a novel like this as soon as I can!
الرائع جيفري أرتشر في احد كتبة الاربعه المترجمة للعربيه
أكثر ما يتمكن منة الكاتب هو قدرتة علي الحكي و نسج التفاصيل الصغيرة الكثيرة ليترك لك لغز هنا و موقف صادم هناك و صدفة تغير مجري الاحداث في جزء آخر
يتشابة بالفعل احد اعمده الروايه الرئيسية مع رائعه الكسندر دوماس الكونت دي مونت كريستو الا ان سجين بالميلاد تكاد تكون النسخة المحدثة منها في عالم اليوم لكن هذا لا يقلل علي الاطلاق من متعه الروايه
يعرف جيفري ارتشر كيف يجعلك ملتصقا بمقعدك و تواصل القراءه و يعرف كيف يجعلك تنتهي من قراءه ما كتب في اقل و...more
أكثر ما يتمكن منة الكاتب هو قدرتة علي الحكي و نسج التفاصيل الصغيرة الكثيرة ليترك لك لغز هنا و موقف صادم هناك و صدفة تغير مجري الاحداث في جزء آخر
يتشابة بالفعل احد اعمده الروايه الرئيسية مع رائعه الكسندر دوماس الكونت دي مونت كريستو الا ان سجين بالميلاد تكاد تكون النسخة المحدثة منها في عالم اليوم لكن هذا لا يقلل علي الاطلاق من متعه الروايه
يعرف جيفري ارتشر كيف يجعلك ملتصقا بمقعدك و تواصل القراءه و يعرف كيف يجعلك تنتهي من قراءه ما كتب في اقل و...more
As a friend very rightly put it…’A Prisoner of Birth’ has all the makings of a Bollywood Masala Movie.
Danny Cartwright, a humble East-End mechanic has just proposed to his childhood sweet heart Beth. He decides to celebrate by treating his fiancée and best-friend Bernie Wilson (who also happens to be Beth’s brother) at an upmarket bar ‘The Dunlop Arms’. Also present at the bar, are a drunken party of four men, who started passing lewd comments at Beth and raise Bernie’s ire. Despite Danny’s prot...more
Danny Cartwright, a humble East-End mechanic has just proposed to his childhood sweet heart Beth. He decides to celebrate by treating his fiancée and best-friend Bernie Wilson (who also happens to be Beth’s brother) at an upmarket bar ‘The Dunlop Arms’. Also present at the bar, are a drunken party of four men, who started passing lewd comments at Beth and raise Bernie’s ire. Despite Danny’s prot...more
Well its hard to meet the readers' expectations if your first few books are "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less", "Kane and Abel" & "As the Crow Flies".
I felt that though the plot is not something that would make one say ... wow! now that's a new one.
Its a slight parallel of the first book mentioned above from his early days as well as "The Count of Monte Cristo" (As Archer himself agrees in many of his interviews)
What I liked most is the pace at which the story runs. Probably that is why it...more
I felt that though the plot is not something that would make one say ... wow! now that's a new one.
Its a slight parallel of the first book mentioned above from his early days as well as "The Count of Monte Cristo" (As Archer himself agrees in many of his interviews)
What I liked most is the pace at which the story runs. Probably that is why it...more
A (loosely based) modern day retelling of the Count of Monte Cristo.
This story was fun but I didn't think it was particularly well written and the story was too long.
This story was fun but I didn't think it was particularly well written and the story was too long.
This was an interesting story that pulled heavily from The Count of Monte Cristo. Still, it was entertaining, even if it wasn't an edge of your seat thriller.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Audiobook read by Roger Allum - The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite books of all time. I re-read it every couple years, and if I stumble across a movie version on television, I am powerless to not watch it, no matter how many times I've seen that version before (or how bad the adaptation is). When I heard that Archer had done an "update" on TCoMC for his newest book, of course I had to read/listen to it. The bad news is Archer still writes like a man who could live alone on a deserte...more
May 05, 2013
John Koshak
added it
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 his 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...more
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...more
Danny and Beth meet Bernie, Beth’s brother and Danny’s best friend, at a bar to celebrate their engagement. They are tradesmen who live in the East end. Also, in the bar are four well educated university friends who antagonize Bernie and Danny. A fight begins in the alley between two of the university friends and Bernie and Danny. Bernie is murdered and Danny is accused of killing him. The four friends band together and say Danny is the murderer. Danny goes to trial, is found guilty and is sente...more
This is one of the best books I've read in a while. My only complaint would be that, due to the intricate nature of the story, it may not retain much re-readability. I'm sure I'll enjoy it again if I read it years from now, as the interaction between the characters is real and exquisite, but there obviously won't remain the same unknown quality as I move through the plot a second time.
The author borrows heavily from Alexandre Dumas, and doesn't really make a secret of it. The parallels between t...more
The author borrows heavily from Alexandre Dumas, and doesn't really make a secret of it. The parallels between t...more
Jeffery Archer released his latest novel entitled “A Prisoner of Birth” and is now available in paperback. The title was most apt for the storyline that was written.
I spent past few days reading it and I could hardly leave the book. The storyline captivates you and you just wanted to read till the end to see how it develops and ends. That explains why I have not been able to blog for the week.
Jeffrey Archer still has his magic and able to weave a story that has its fair share of unexpected twi...more
I spent past few days reading it and I could hardly leave the book. The storyline captivates you and you just wanted to read till the end to see how it develops and ends. That explains why I have not been able to blog for the week.
Jeffrey Archer still has his magic and able to weave a story that has its fair share of unexpected twi...more
WHY I CHOSE THIS BOOK: I bought this book in 2009 because I'd heard a lot of wonderful things about the author. But then I read his book "Paths of Glory" and was pretty dissapointed. So it sat on my shelves gathering dust for two years and a half. I was recently under so much stress; part of it involved the passing of my uncle, and my grandmother's sickness, my own health complications... and that's not counting my professional troubles. Usually when I'm in such a rut I'd look for an equally mis...more
Why I decided to read:My brother had recommended this book to me after he read it himself so he gave it to me.That's how I got started reading this book.
This book ticks off the 'Book with a male main character' slot in my bingo board.I had read a few books with male main characters but couldn't decide which one to fit in the slot,so I ended up choosing this one.
Favourite quote of this book:'Lawrence Andrew Davenport,you are charged with perverting the course of justice,in that on March twenty-th...more
This book ticks off the 'Book with a male main character' slot in my bingo board.I had read a few books with male main characters but couldn't decide which one to fit in the slot,so I ended up choosing this one.
Favourite quote of this book:'Lawrence Andrew Davenport,you are charged with perverting the course of justice,in that on March twenty-th...more
In this highly entertaining novel by Jeffrey Archer he reworks the themes and plot of Alexandre Dumas's, The Count of Monte Cristo. Both stories concern a man who has been falsely accused, suffers a gross miscarriage of justice, and concocts an elaborate and complex method of exacting his revenge. Also, Archer's novel highlights the inequalities of the British class system. Danny Cartwright, a poor working-class man from London's East End, is accused of a murder which he did not commit by four m...more
My father lent me this book, and I hadn’t even realised Jeffrey Archer was writing again. I previously read his Kane & Abel series which were really good, but that was quite a long time ago, and I struggle to remember things that far back!
Both my parents had read this, and both told me it was essentially unputdownable. My mother read it in both condensed and then full length format. I was expecting great things. I wasn’t disappointed.
It really is a page turner, and yet at the same time there...more
Both my parents had read this, and both told me it was essentially unputdownable. My mother read it in both condensed and then full length format. I was expecting great things. I wasn’t disappointed.
It really is a page turner, and yet at the same time there...more
Once I got into the story this was another book I struggled to put down.
Danny Cartwright and Spencer Craig never should have met. One evening, Danny, an East End cockney who works as a garage mechanic, takes his fianceé up to the West End to celebrate their engagement. He crosses the path of Spencer Craig, a West End barrister posed to be the youngest Queen’s Counsel of his generation.
A few hours later Danny is arrested for murder and later is sentenced to twenty-two years in prison, thanks to...more
Danny Cartwright and Spencer Craig never should have met. One evening, Danny, an East End cockney who works as a garage mechanic, takes his fianceé up to the West End to celebrate their engagement. He crosses the path of Spencer Craig, a West End barrister posed to be the youngest Queen’s Counsel of his generation.
A few hours later Danny is arrested for murder and later is sentenced to twenty-two years in prison, thanks to...more
Jeffrey Archer's characters are so very British – ranging from upper class to the working men and women. The main character, East-Enders (blue-collar) Danny Cartwright, his Catholic pregnant girlfriend Beth Wilson and Bernie, Beth's brother and Danny's best friend, gather at a pub to celebrate the upcoming wedding of the happy couple. Enter uppercrust Londers – four drunken men start a fight that ends up the murder of Bernie and arrest of Danny for his murder. Ultimately after much lies by the f...more
While the plot is rather unrealistic given how the main character, Danny Cartwright (an innocent murder suspect who was wrongly sentenced to 22 years imprisonment) managed to cheat the system by impersonating his cellmate – Sir Nicholas Moncrieff after he was murdered in jail. The story is really captivating as you follow the trial and how eventually the Musketeers (the real murderers) were eventually given their just deserves. I would have been more surprised by the twist at the end of the stor...more
Jeffrey Archer - interesting author - synchronistically at about the same time that I read this book, I ran across a magazine piece about Jeffrey Archer - which added immensely to my apprciation of this book. More about that later.
The story is a dichotomy of two young men - who are about the same age - and same general appearance - who end up in the same prison cell - both of them for crimes they didn't commit. One of the men came from a humble, undereducated backgroung and the other from a pri...more
The story is a dichotomy of two young men - who are about the same age - and same general appearance - who end up in the same prison cell - both of them for crimes they didn't commit. One of the men came from a humble, undereducated backgroung and the other from a pri...more
Before starting this novel of revenge and treachery, you will want to make sure that you own or have access to some of those rubber finger tips, as you will assuredly need them if you are going to keep up with this page turner. Chapter breaks act only as mild speed bumps in this 500-page tomb of escapist fiction. Loosely patterned after Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, the story centers around the redemption and revenge of an illiterate London East Ender who is framed and falsely imprisoned for...more
This was such a well written
suspense/thriller
. It's weaned me off my fantasy series books; it was such a good read.
The plot and characters were so well developed. It had so many twists and turns. It was a little predictable in that it's a modern day version of The Count of Monte Cristo , but it was done in such an interesting way I didn't mind. And it's even better than the original classic, if that's possible.
I don't say that lightly at all because I'm the type that believes the original cl...more
The plot and characters were so well developed. It had so many twists and turns. It was a little predictable in that it's a modern day version of The Count of Monte Cristo , but it was done in such an interesting way I didn't mind. And it's even better than the original classic, if that's possible.
I don't say that lightly at all because I'm the type that believes the original cl...more
Jeffrey Archer- A Prisoner of Birth (St. Martin’s Press 2008) 3.5 Stars
Danny Cartwright just proposed to Beth Wilson, his pregnant girlfriend, and life seemed so perfect. Suddenly though he finds himself arrested and charged for a murder he did not commit. When four well-respected witnesses testify against him, one of whom is actually guilty, he is sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. The four think that they have gotten away with it, but they underestimated Danny and Beth’s determination an...more
Danny Cartwright just proposed to Beth Wilson, his pregnant girlfriend, and life seemed so perfect. Suddenly though he finds himself arrested and charged for a murder he did not commit. When four well-respected witnesses testify against him, one of whom is actually guilty, he is sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. The four think that they have gotten away with it, but they underestimated Danny and Beth’s determination an...more
I've been a fan of Archer for quite some time now. My favorites have included Kane & Abel, Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less, As the Crow Flies, and his prison diaries. This is his second novel since being released from prison, having served two years for perjury. I found those journals fascinating, as I did with this book.
The premise of the book is: Danny Cartwright is convicted of murdering his best friend, who also happens to be his soon-to-be brother-in-law. Even though his fiance was th...more
The premise of the book is: Danny Cartwright is convicted of murdering his best friend, who also happens to be his soon-to-be brother-in-law. Even though his fiance was th...more
I have read Jeffrey Archer in the past but this is the best I've come across so far.I haven't read 'Kane and Abel' which is proclaimed to be his best novel but if you're a reader who swears by crime-detective genre of fiction,you're bound to love this one!
The plot begins with the protagonist Danny Cartwright,who works in a car garage,his fiancée Beth Wilson and her brother and Danny's best-mate Bernie Wilson turning up at a wine bar,Dunlop Arms,to celebrate their engagement.They were yet to disc...more
The plot begins with the protagonist Danny Cartwright,who works in a car garage,his fiancée Beth Wilson and her brother and Danny's best-mate Bernie Wilson turning up at a wine bar,Dunlop Arms,to celebrate their engagement.They were yet to disc...more
Lord Archer hits the bulls eye.. again. Loosely resembling the classic 'The Count of Monte Cristo', this book belongs to the league of his earlier works 'Kane and Abel', 'As the Crow Flies' etc. Watch out for the awesomely written court room scenes in the climax. I really wish this would be made into a film. The character of Nick Moncrieff makes me wonder about its inspiration. Other than the brilliant twists and turns that usually characterises his work, I also liked the showcasing of an old wo...more
Jefferey Archer is one of my favourite writers and he never disappoints. 'A Prisoner of Birth' was influenced by Alexander Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo. Like Edmond Dante the first prisoner to escape from the Chateau D'If, Archer's hero, Danny Cartwright is the first convict to escape from Belmarsh.
I enjoyed this story of revenge and retribution which kept me reading for an entire Sunday.If I have one criticism I never really understood why Danny had never learned to read and write at school. H...more
I enjoyed this story of revenge and retribution which kept me reading for an entire Sunday.If I have one criticism I never really understood why Danny had never learned to read and write at school. H...more
Orjinal Adı A.Prisoner of Birth olan Jeffrey Archer'in Son Yargı kitabının Goodreads puanı 5/3,98 Benim puanım 5/5 Müthiş bir kitaptı.Bu kitabı okumakta bu kadar geç kaldığım için çok üzgünüm..
Hikaye ana hatları Monte Cristo Kontu'nun günümüze uyarlanması gibiyse de yazarın anlatımın çok beğendim.Özellikle kitabın sonuna doğru olan mahkeme sahneleri unutulmazdı bana göre.
En kısa zamanda yazarın diğer kitaplarını da okumaya başlamak istiyorum.
Hikaye tam anlamı ile yalnış zamanda yalnış yerde olma...more
Hikaye ana hatları Monte Cristo Kontu'nun günümüze uyarlanması gibiyse de yazarın anlatımın çok beğendim.Özellikle kitabın sonuna doğru olan mahkeme sahneleri unutulmazdı bana göre.
En kısa zamanda yazarın diğer kitaplarını da okumaya başlamak istiyorum.
Hikaye tam anlamı ile yalnış zamanda yalnış yerde olma...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Prisoner of Birth | 7 | 95 | Nov 20, 2011 06:54am | |
| Prison Diaries | 1 | 24 | Jul 26, 2010 11:41pm |
Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is an English author and former politician.
He was a Member of Parliament and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, and became a life peer in 1992. His political career, having suffered several controversies, ended after a conviction for perverting the course of justice and his subsequent imprisonment. He is married...more
More about Jeffrey Archer...
He was a Member of Parliament and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, and became a life peer in 1992. His political career, having suffered several controversies, ended after a conviction for perverting the course of justice and his subsequent imprisonment. He is married...more
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“I have discovered with advancing years that few things are entirely black or white, but more often different shades of grey.”
—
75 people liked it
“we all suffer in our different ways from being prisoners of birth.”
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26 people liked it
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