Art student Nick Wood risks selling a few Ecstasy tablets at a party to impress friends and ends up with a two year prison sentence. He hopes to spend his sentence in an open prison, the type he's read about in the papers. The ones often referred to as 'holiday camps'. Instead, his worst nightmare comes true.
Locked up in HMP Blackthorpe, a prison known for its medieval-like squalor and brutal violence, Nick lives at the mercy of the drug barons and in fear of the lifers. Constantly stalked by danger he has to find a way to survive in the prison rife with heroin.
To earn protection money he turns to the one thing he's good at - art. But can selling pictures to visitors be enough to keep the mob at bay? Or will he be made an example of by the hard men and suffer the worst type of prison punishment?
This book is based on the experiences of the author.