Billy Rags

(Paperback)

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Description

It's the 1960s and Billy Cracken is a hard man to keep locked up. An austere and troubled childhood has given way to life as a hardened criminal and now status as one of the most feared prisoners in England. He has been moved from one maximum security prison to the next. Guards and inmates alike fear and begrudgingly respect the powerfully-built Cracken. But a life doing his porridge, even if as a minor celebrity, isn't the one he wants.

A girlfriend and a child await Cracken on the outside and he'll stop at nothing to get to them. While plotting his escape he crosses a powerful mobster who vows to make Cracken's life hell, and if nothing else succeeds at making his escape all the more difficult, something the ever-rebellious Cracken defiantly relishes.

The follow-up novel to the wildly successful Get Carter, Billy Rags is a fascinating look into the lives of British inmates serving time in a maximum security prison. Lewis manages once again to tell an exciting, action-filled story with a soul - demonstrated most clearly in a series of brilliant flashbacks to Billy's childhood and in the end conjures a character that will remind readers of both Tom Hardy in Bronson and Lee Marvin in Point Blank.

'This is vintage British pulp fiction at its fast, furious and thoroughly sleazy best' - Guardian

'His characters have no tenderness, the settings are bleak, but this isn't pulp fiction it's real writing' - Times

'The book is outstanding: Lewis... judges perfectly when to horrify the reader and when to hold back' -

Telegraph

'Ted Lewis is one of the most influential crime novelists Britain has ever produced, and his shadow falls on all noir fiction, whether on page or screen, created on these isles since his passing' - Stuart Neville

'Ted Lewis cuts to the bone' - James Sallis

'An example of how dangerous writing can really be when it is done properly... By preferring to look the street straight in the face instead of peeping at it from behind an upstairs curtain, Ted Lewis cleared a road straight through the black jungle' - Derek Raymond

Reviews

'PRAISE FOR TED LEWIS; 'An example of how dangerous writing can really be when it is done properly... Ted Lewis's writing proves that he never ran away from the page. Because with Lewis, the page was the battle' - Derek Raymond; 'Ted Lewis is one of the most influential crime novelists Britain has ever produced, and his shadow falls on all noir fiction, whether on page or screen, created on these isles since his passing. I wouldn't be the writer I am without Ted Lewis. It's time the world rediscovered him' - Stuart Neville; 'Ted Lewis cuts to the bone' - James Sallis; 'When it comes to dealing with your actual hard man, no one does it better than the late, great Ted Lewis' - John L Williams'

Author Bio

Born in Manchester, England, Ted Lewis (1940-1982) spent most of his youth in

Barton-upon-Humber in the north of England. After graduating from Hull Art School,

Lewis moved to London and first worked in advertising before becoming an animation

specialist, working on the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. His novels are the product of

his lifelong fascination with the criminal lifestyle of London's Soho district and the

down-and-out lifestyle of the English factory town. Lewis' novels pioneered the British

noir school. He authored nine novels, the second of which, Jack's Return Home, was

famously adapted in 1971 as the now iconic Get Carter, which stars Michael Caine.