MY colleague Dan Carrier never stops and, hot on the heels of his recent book about Untold London, he comes again with the story of John Massey, something of a prison escape artist.

In bookshops now, Locks, Bolts And Bars: A Life Inside explains how Massey spent decades in prison after seeing his sentence extended for absconding from custody to see his dying relatives.

A 20-year term ended up as more than four decades in a cell.

Certainly it does not glorify his crimes – he was jailed for killing a nightclub bouncer – but the book does give a close-up and unflinching look at how the prison system works.

Or doesn’t work as some might come to believe after reading Dan’s work.

Massey hit the headlines after breaking out of Pentonville Prison – that miserable overcrowded jail in Islington – in 2012. His mother was on her deathbed.

The book reveals just how he did it. But after thinking long and hard, I’ve come to the view that telling you here would be like ruining the ending of a good detective novel.

It’s worth getting a copy – for this was a real life episode which could have been a film script.