More prison sentences from Archer the ex-con

His forthcoming novel, A Prisoner of Birth - his 14th work of fiction to date - is "a powerful new novel of deception, hatred and revenge" and is an updating of Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo.

Archer never knowingly undersells himself, even if he has to piggyback on someone else's literary reputation. His blog carries a link to "the new blockbuster from one of the bestselling authors of all time" and this declaration from the peer himself: "Actors and singers should never read reviews and I feel writers ought to fall into the same category. However, a Prisoner of Birth has received its first review in the United States... So I felt I should share this first one with you."

How magnanimous. In a nutshell, A Prisoner of Birth is about a man who is wrongly imprisoned in Belmarsh (not Jeffrey Archer, who was deservedly imprisoned in Belmarsh) for the murder of his best friend. Danny Cartwright escapes from jail and exacts his revenge on the four prosecution witnesses who testified against him.

There have always been question marks about the authorship of Archer's novels. Does he really write them himself, sceptics wonder? How much "help" does he get from his editor? I think that is largely an irrelevance, especially in an era when Naomi Campbell makes a virtue of not even reading the books she has supposedly written.

What is so remarkable about A Prisoner of Birth is how closely it resembles the man himself. The story is at first plausible and beguiling, then niggling doubts set in and before too long you find it increasingly hard to suspend disbelief. Those, like myself, who have met Lord Archer all testify to a similar experience.

It's not that the story is bad. How could it be, given that it's largely a rip-off of Dumas? It is a rollicking adventure narrated in Janet and John-style prose and draws on Archer's own experiences in the nick. But the central plot twist rests on the most improbable and preposterous coincidence: so close is Danny's physical resemblance to fellow cellmate Nick Moncrieff that he is able to swap identities and get out on parole to pursue his vendetta.

It is perhaps uncharitable to nitpick, as the book is full of comic gems. Only in a Jeffrey Archer novel, for example, could a man use his old school tie as a tourniquet to mainline heroin. Does anyone still wear an old school tie? Maybe, yes, if like Archer your alma mater is Wellington School, Somerset.

I can't say I will voluntarily read a Jeffrey Archer book again. I have to confess I was paid to review it. But it is an enlightening experience. A Prisoner of Birth, c'est moi, as Archer might have said.