He's back. But the new Jeffrey Archer is stranger than fiction

Jeffrey Archer is out early. The perjurer peer may still be serving his four-year sentence at Hollesley Bay prison in Suffolk, but his new publisher, Macmillan, has rush-released his latest novel to catch the Christmas market.

Maria Rejt, Macmillan's publishing director and now Archer's editor, revealed yesterday: "I found him absolutely delightful to work with." But Sons of Fortune, an American family and political saga that is billed as "a chronicle of a nation in transition", is punctuated with elementary gaffes that may severely limit the novel's appeal across the Atlantic. "Ain't Misbehavin" could surely act as the disgraced peer's lifelong theme tune. Surely only Jeffrey Archer thinks the song was written by Cole Porter rather than by Fats Waller and Andy Razaf.

Sons of Fortune is the first fiction to emerge from a controversial deal estimated at £11m. It was negotiated with Macmillan from behind bars by Archer, seemingly in defiance of prison regulations that limit a convict's right to conduct business meetings while inside. Macmillan has advance orders of 500,000 worldwide for the novel, Archer's 11th. Richard Charkin, the German-owned company's chief executive, commented that the book "shows his determination to continue his writing profession in spite of strange and difficult circumstances".

One industry insider disagreed yesterday, calling the deal "two fingers in the face to every poor sod in jail on a minor charge". The HomeOffice will not comment on individual cases but there is wide-spread bemusement among publishers that a jail term has done so little to hinder Archer's commercial activities. The proceeds from his deal will be held for him in an account ­ presumably earning the usual interest ­ until his release.

Sons of Fortune returns to the author's favourite theme of a pair of battling brothers. Separated at birth in a New England hospital in 1949 and ignorant of their kinship, twins Nat and Fletcher have parallel high-flying careers in the law, banking and politics. The blood brothers finally discover their relationship in the course of a neck-and-neck race for a US state governorship in 1992. During the primary contest for this election, Nat, a moderate Republican, expresses liberal views on penal policy. Opposing a right-winger who thinks offenders "should all be locked up and taught a lesson", Nat "was less sure that prison was the answer to every problem".

Archer's ability to sustain his profession while in jail involved meetings over the summer at North Sea Camp open prison with his agent, Jonathan Lloyd of Curtis Brown, and with Maria Rejt and Adrian Soar from Macmillan. They discussed his novels ­ formerly published by HarperCollins ­ and his projected trilogy of Prison Diaries (the first instalment appeared in October).

Ms Rejt said: "We had had the odd argument about male-female relationships" in the novel, and that he made cuts at her request. She is his first female editor, after collaborations with Richard Cohen (at Hodder & Stoughton) and Stuart Proffitt (at HarperCollins).

Archer, Ms Rejt recalls, "would work through the night if necessary" to revise Sons of Fortune. She praised the helpfulness of the staff at North Sea Camp and said no restrictions had been placed on Archer's ability to send out and correct his manuscripts, using a stock of pre-paid envelopes. "Nothing was ever late. Nothing was held up."

Prison officers did delay the delivery of finished copies because "people sometimes put drugs down the spine of books". Ms Rejt says Archer was "very diligent about checking everything" at proof stage and that the book required a lot of fact-checking, given that it spans decades of recent history.

Some readers may soon conclude Macmillan should have taken its eyes off Christmas sales and returned them to the text. Sons of Fortune is spotted with errors of the sort that Archer's previous publishers sometimes saved him from committing. In early 1976, the young Nat is praised for his "political antennae" as a currency dealer when he advises clients to sell pesetas because of Spain's "left-wing government". At that point, the late dictator Franco was scarcely cold; his henchman ran the country, which did not have free elections until 1977, or a Socialist majority until 1982. Those "political antennae" evidently match Archer's own. He also makes Henry Kissinger serve as national security adviser to Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War (Richard Nixon appointed Dr K in 1969). Archer even has William Faulkner ­ rather than John Steinbeck ­ write The Grapes of Wrath.

So, despite the patriotic flag-draped eagle on its cover, Sons of Fortune will labour under a few disadvantages in the US market. They may also include Archer's narrow range of snobby East Coast institutions (boarding schools, smart campuses, law firms, political caucuses) and his total inability to make Americans sound at all American when they talk. Even the few stabs at local idioms collapse into a jumble of mixed metaphors. "The Cedar Wood project may not be the curved ball, in which case you will have opened that can of worms unnecessarily," runs one immortal sentence. Archer thinks the correct phrase for an ex-pupil is "a former alumni", takes "pragmatism" to mean "cynicism", and misunderstands both "quantum leap" and "pyrrhic victory". A few more late-night sessions in his cell might have paid dividends.

Nobody ever opened one of Archer's fictional cans of worms for the prose (or for the accuracy). What does intrigue, even for sceptics, is his compulsive desire to insert fragments from his own curious career. This urge began with his debut blockbuster, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, and continues in Sons of Fortune. It boasts, mostly offstage, a villainous serial cheat called Ralph Elliot who "has the mind of a criminal" and fibs about his record while accusing one of our purer-than-pure heroes of doing the same. We also meet a female "fraudster of genius" who impersonates an English property mogul, Julia Kirkbridge. Archer's names are of interest: this leading lady is two letters away from the Daily Telegraph journalist-turned-Tory MP, Julie Kirkbride.

Two courtroom scenes climax in dazzling defence speeches that lead to the failure of malicious charges against noble, falsely indicted defendants. Most poignantly, the novel swarms with benign father-figures who bless the heroes and commend them for playing by the rules.

In this fantasy of upper-crust Wasp life, the clean-cut good guys come first without any need for make-believe or subterfuge. Sons of Fortune is a dream of protective fathers ­ professional, more than biological ­ and of dutiful, guileless sons. It takes us nowhere near a credible America of law, politics and business. But it does allow a privileged visit to that most exotic of locations: Jeffrey Archer's mind.

A TASTE OF 'SONS OF FORTUNE' ...

"Are you sure," asked Nat quietly.

"Yes, I am," replied Rebecca.

"Then why must we get married as soon as possible," said Nat.

"Why?" asked Rebecca. "We live in the Sixties, the age of the Beatles, pot, and free love so why shouldn't I have an abortion?"

"Is that what you want?" asked Nat in disbelief.

"I don't know what I want," said Rebecca. "I only found out this morning. I need some more time to think about it."

Nat took her hand. "I'd marry you tomorrow if you'd have me."

"I know you would," said Rebecca squeezing his hand, "but we have to face the fact that this decision will affect the rest of our lives. We shouldn't rush into it."

"But I have a moral responsibility to you and our child."

"And I have my future to consider," said Rebecca.

"Perhaps we should tell our parents, and see how they react?"

"That's the last thing I want to do," said Rebecca. "Your mother will expect us to get married this afternoon, and my father will turn up on campus with a shotgun under his arm. No, I want you to promise you won't mention that I'm pregnant to anyone, especially our parents."