Billy Rags

A fascinating window in on life in a British maximum security prison, Billy Rags—by the author of Get Carter—is crime fiction at its best: lean, mean, and full of startling psychological depth.

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.

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Billy Rags

A fascinating window in on life in a British maximum security prison, Billy Rags—by the author of Get Carter—is crime fiction at its best: lean, mean, and full of startling psychological depth.

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.

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Billy Rags

Billy Rags

by Ted Lewis
Billy Rags

Billy Rags

by Ted Lewis

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Overview

A fascinating window in on life in a British maximum security prison, Billy Rags—by the author of Get Carter—is crime fiction at its best: lean, mean, and full of startling psychological depth.

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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780984212538
Publisher: Soho Press, Incorporated
Publication date: 03/17/2015
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 284
File size: 969 KB

About the Author

Born in 1940, Ted Lewis 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 for several features, including the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. A pioneer of British noir fiction, Lewis authored nine novels, the second of which was adapted in 1971 as the now iconic Get Carter, starring Michael Caine. He wrote two other Jack Carter books, Jack Carter’s Law and Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon, as well as six other novels: Plender, Billy Rags, Boldt, All the Way Home and All the Night Through, The Rabbit, and his final masterpiece, GBH. Lewis died in 1982 at age 42.

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