The Perfect Victim

Edmond Dantès has everything: a ship to captain, a wedding days away, a future. Then three men destroy him out of jealousy, ambition, and cowardice. On the morning of his wedding, he is arrested on a false charge and locked away without trial. He spends fourteen years in the Château d'If, a stone fortress on an island off Marseille, never knowing exactly why.

A fellow prisoner changes everything. Abbé Faria, a scholar locked away for his own reasons, tunnels into Dantès's cell by mistake. Over years, Faria teaches him languages, science, history, and swordplay, then reveals the location of a hidden fortune on the island of Monte Cristo. The prison becomes an involuntary university — and Dantès walks out a different man than the sailor who walked in.