Get Carter (Jack Carter Trilogy Book 1)

Crime fiction's favorite mafia samurai is back for his third, and final, novel, the novel that will tie up some of the loose ends from the previous two prequels. Yes, Jack is back, and now he's back home, and he is on a mission, he's come home to find out what happened to his older, and much more honest, and moral, brother Frank. Frank, you see, seems to have gotten drunk, and then he has gone and driven his car off a cliff in an apparent suicide or accident. Only, well, Frank never drank the hard stuff, and despite many of his mob buddies not wanting him to stir the pot, Jack Carter is going to find out, come hell or high water, what has happened to his brother, and which has left Frank's troubled fifteen year-old niece Doreen fatherless. And along the way he will reconnect with old "mates", who would be just as happy as not, to ever have seen Jack again. And of all this is happening as Jack is finally getting his life together and getting ready to rabbit with his long-time squeeze, the unstable Audrey Fletcher, the wife of his long-time boss Gerald, who, along with his brother Les, are stand-ins for the late real-life Kray brothers. But none of this is going to stop Jack from bigfooting it through his unnamed home town, which was Newcastle in the movie version, and its above, and underground, worlds. And when he realizes that some of his long-time "mates" have involved Doreen, who may, or may not, also be his child, Jack become the great white shark ready to take down all those that he will hold responsible for the slights against him. This will be a typical Ted Lewis novel that is filled with LONG descriptive paragraphs, run-on sentences, and a series of constantly divergent flashbacks to give the currently unravelling events a sense of importance. It will also be filled with interesting characters, including Frank, who, although dead, and never really appears on stage, is one of the main characters of "Get Carter". Or, the young Keith, a barman who will be Jack's eyes and ears at the Cycle, the bar where Frank used to work, or the sadistic Peter the Dutchman, with whom Jack has had a long-standing grudge. And in true noir fashion, dark secrets will start to be uncovered, and the plot will take on some crazy twists, amongst of which is that Peter the Dutchman will decide to rat out Jack in a very unforgivable way, and that another character has gotten Doreen involved in something that Jack, in the novel "Jack Carter And The Mafia Pigeon" has already declared that he has a distaste for. While "Get Carter", a. k. a.: "Jack's Return Home", was the first novel to be published, the following novels "Jack Carter's Law" and "Jack Carter And The Mafia Pigeon" are actually post-written prequels to this novel, and while reading them is not necessary to reading this novel, they do add some history as to who some of these characters in "Get Carter" are, and what they have to do with the circumstances of this novel, and why Jack has no compunction against going against them. While this is a classic crime novel, and set the template for future books and authors in the crime field, I can only give this novel four stars, four-and-a-half-stars really, but I'll round up, because I actually prefer the ending of the movie to the ending of the novel, although this novel leaves hints that there could have been an another sequel, a sequel that was never to be. However, if you are a fan of the novel, then the good news is that much of the dialogue and descriptions in the movie have been lifted from this novel, so I think, that if you are a fan of the movie, you will like this book, and vice versa. Of course, nothing will ever beat Michael Caine as Jack Carter, and as you read "Carter's Back" you can actually see the young Caine walking through this book adding a dimension that this book didn't originally have. If you are a fan of dark, hard-boiled, and unrelenting crime novels, then the first and last novels in the Jack Carter trilogy are must reading. For this site I have also reviewed these other crime novels: Getting Off: A Novel of Sex and Violence  by Lawrence Block. Hitman: Enemy Within  by William C. Dietz. In Adam's Fall  by Phoebe Wray.Jack Carter #1:  Jack Carter's Law (The Jack Carter Trilogy)  by Ted Lewis.Jack Carter #2:  Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (The Jack Carter Trilogy)  by Ted Lewis. The Road of the Dead (Push Fiction)  by Kevin Brooks. And these crime graphic novels: Batman: The Long Halloween  by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale.  Green Candles (1 of 3)  #1: Blood Memories by Tom De Haven & Robin Smith.Green Candles #3:  Green Candles Volume 3: Don't Forget Me  by Tom De Haven & Robin Smith.

"Get Carter," Ted Lewis' seminal and widely influential novel of British gangsters, was published in 1970 under its original title of "Jack's Return Home," and that's what the book is: a homecoming. Jack Carter has come home to bury his older brother. The Carters weren't particularly close. Frank disapproved of the path Jack chose early in life, and Jack has perhaps since then felt a niggling sense of shame and inferiority. Frank was the good boy. "Anything he didn't like he shut out. Like me," Jack says.Despite his job behind a bar, Frank Carter was the clean-living brother. Don't drink, don't smoke, etc., except in moderation. So when he turns up dead behind the wheel in a Scotch-soaked shirt, brother Jack gets suspicious. "They hadn't even bothered to be careful; they hadn't even bothered to be clever."Frank left behind Doreen, a 15-year-old daughter of uncertain parentage, and his mistress, Margaret the pub whore. For Jack, who sees women as objects for sex and/or slapping, Doreen is something of a puzzler. But he feels the obligations of family, even family he doesn't really know, and he wants to take care of her, or at least see to it that she's taken care of. Margaret's got other regulars and will probably have to fend for herself.Even though Frank looked down on Jack's criminal career, they both worked for the same shady characters in a way. All the local pubs, including the one where Frank tended bar, are owned by "the big boys. The governors." Jack's employers in London warn him not to stir up trouble in the sticks, but Jack, who's been covertly cavorting with the boss's bird, isn't exactly the model employee of the month. As far away as London, he can smell that something about Frank's death stinks. "It's so strong it's blowing all the way down from the north ... and right up my nose."Jack goes to the country for Frank's funeral, and over the course of that weekend, he sets out to learn whether Frank's death was a suicide or, more likely, a murder. Frank "wasn't the kind of bloke to get pissed and accidentally drive himself off top road. He wasn't the kind of bloke to do it on purpose. And he wasn't the kind of bloke to get into trouble with some people that might matter."Jack makes a nuisance of himself in pubs, crashes the parties of the area's minor crime lords and prods England's underbelly with a symbolically weighted shotgun. While leaving time for shenanigans with his slatternly landlady.England has never been as free in its gunslinging as America, so British crime writers try to make up in atmosphere what they lack in armory. Lewis' England is a purgatorial landscape of flame-spewing steelworks hemming in cloistered and close-minded communities, an atmosphere that can make a stationary man filthy, a constantly looming presence of dreary, drizzly oppressiveness. Rain, always rain. "The rain rained," the book begins. Elmore Leonard advised writers not to start with the weather report, but I think even he would have approved of that opening.The modern U.K. gangster in film and fiction was more or less born here. Lewis' book, followed closely by Michael Caine's iconic performance in the film adaptation, grew quickly to maturity and sired a bastardly brood that, directly or indirectly, includes "The Limey," "Sexy Beast," Guy Ritchie, Ken Bruen, Stuart Neville, an entire generation of reprobates that sprouts new cousins every year. Thanks to the governors at the Soho syndicate, which republished the Jack Carter trilogy, Lewis has staggered back to readers like a foul-mouthed, long-delinquent daddy, reeking of cigarettes, pub spillage and potential for busted heads.Sitcom of my dreams: Ted Lewis' Carter and Donald Westlake's Parker as roommates.

When his brother dies in a drunk driving accident, Jack Carter comes back to his home town for the funeral. Since his brother never drank, Jack is suspicious and digs into his brother's final days to figure out what happened.Get Carter is a dark murder mystery. Set in 1960s England, it features a bad man in a world of other bad men, looking for his brother's murderers. It was adapted into a classic movie in 1971 starring Michael Caine and a lackluster movie starring Sylvester Stallone in 2000.Jack Carter walks through a spider's web of shifty English gangsters, each one dirtier than the last, trying to figure out what exactly happened to his brother. What he finds isn't pretty. Jack's conflicted feelings about his brother give the book an added dimension, keeping it from feeling like a simple revenge book.The novel is heavy on atmosphere and dialogue but short on action for most of the book. When the action finally does come, it's as brutal as a head-on collision. Pretty much everyone Jack encounters is a filthy, smegging, lying, smegging liar and it's pretty satisfying when the parties responsible for Frank's murder get their comeuppance.As I said before, the book is high on atmosphere. I kept picturing Ewan MacGregor or Jason Statham circa 2000 in the title role. I'd be surprised if a remake wasn't at least considered as a Jason Statham vehicle at some point. It could easily be dumbed down for the crap he usually stars in and it would have to be better than the Sylvester Stallone version of the film.It's easy to see why Get Carter was a big deal in Britain when it was released.

When his brother dies in a drunk driving accident, Jack Carter comes back to his home town for the funeral. Since his brother never drank, Jack is suspicious and digs into his brother's final days to figure out what happened.Get Carter is a dark murder mystery. Set in 1960s England, it features a bad man in a world of other bad men, looking for his brother's murderers. It was adapted into a classic movie in 1971 starring Michael Caine and a lackluster movie starring Sylvester Stallone in 2000.Jack Carter walks through a spider's web of shifty English gangsters, each one dirtier than the last, trying to figure out what exactly happened to his brother. What he finds isn't pretty. Jack's conflicted feelings about his brother give the book an added dimension, keeping it from feeling like a simple revenge book.The novel is heavy on atmosphere and dialogue but short on action for most of the book. When the action finally does come, it's as brutal as a head-on collision. Pretty much everyone Jack encounters is a filthy, smegging, lying, smegging liar and it's pretty satisfying when the parties responsible for Frank's murder get their comeuppance.As I said before, the book is high on atmosphere. I kept picturing Ewan MacGregor or Jason Statham circa 2000 in the title role. I'd be surprised if a remake wasn't at least considered as a Jason Statham vehicle at some point. It could easily be dumbed down for the crap he usually stars in and it would have to be better than the Sylvester Stallone version of the film.It's easy to see why Get Carter was a big deal in Britain when it was released. Four out of five stars.

I bought this book because I'd enjoyed the film Get Carter.However, I knew the film was 'based on' the book so the story wouldn't be quite the same and I was fine with that.The book stands up on its own. You can absolutely see how the film was based on the book, but the book is its own book. In fact, it augments the film in as much as the book goes in to the background and the past and makes the film make more sense. The book pulls you through the story from scene to scene describing details (the people, the settings, the fights) that make it all seem so vivid and hard to put down. Ted Lewis has a very distinctive writing style that makes you feel like you're right there with Jack.So don't think this is the book of the film - it's the book that inspired the film and it's worth getting.

Jack Carter returns to his industrial hometown for the funeral of his brother Frank. While he’s back home Jack starts digging into the mysterious death of Frank in a car crash. Ruthless Carter will stamp on anyone to find out the truth but with his employers Gerald and Les back in London frowning at his exploits this could be even more dangerous than Jack would imagine especially considering his secret affair with Audrey Fletcher, Gerald’s wife. Jack’s Return Home (Get Carter) is written in a tough, gritty style while relating events from a first person perspective. Ted Lewis produced a gripping narrative that superbly creates a world of smoke filled pubs, seedy clubs, gamblers, fighters and small time gangsters. A brutal underworld full of despicable characters both men and women. Jack’s back story is fleshed out, something omitted from the famous movie Get Carter, giving the novel a fuller more emotional impact and a greater understanding of the central character Jack Carter. In its own brutal, gritty way this crime novel is as classic and astonishing as anything by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. Highly recommended for any fan of gritty British crime fiction.

Gritty and oozing period atmosphere, from watery beer to flock wallpaper. The rich pads are a kitch nightmare, and the rest crackle with bri nylon bedsheets and fag-butt leatherette.If Lee Child hasn't studied the fight scenes, I'll eat my signet ring.British noir - the real thing.

Whether you read the book or watch Michael Caine in a different version but still very good film doesn't really matter. Either way you will receive a thriller that lives up to the name with more twists than a tree snake. It is so difficult to review such items without spoilers so I shant try. Just take my word for it, this is one that will never disappoint you whatever format.