Portrait of a prisoner

The book is set in Manchester and opens with the conviction of David Cuthbertson for manslaughter, to then backtrack to introduce David as a child. His father is violent, but he disappears shortly after David’s sixteenth birthday with an inference that he’s buried in the bottom garden. David leaves school to take up work on the docks, but his life is changed after he hits a student in a pub brawl. In prison he becomes leader of the power group, a role in which he’s faced with multiple challenges including attempts on his life. He also rediscovers his interest in the physical sciences and spends his spare time in the library absorbing texts of mathematics, physics and philosophy. During an investigation into the abduction of a child, David meets a ‘Wizard of Deception Detection’ Ann Thomas. She becomes convinced that David has been wrongly convicted and sets out to prove it. Meanwhile David slips into schizophrenia, then a riot breaks out when his fellow prisoners see him manhandled into solitary. The book has elements of the TV series ‘Porridge’, the Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont), A Beautiful Mind (Sylvia Nasar) and Watership Down (Richard Adams).