Nonfiction Review: Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir by Nick Triplow

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Ted Lewis (1940 - 1982) was a British creative genius: musician, artist, animator, screen writer, and, above all, a crime fiction writer. As with his protagonists, he was doomed and, like many creative people, he was ultimately brought down by drugs. In his case, the drug of choice was alcohol. If his name is recognized today , it is probably as the author of Jack's Return Home —otherwise known as Get Carter —which was the source of the Mike Hodges film Get Carter staring Michael Caine. as Jack Carter. For a crime fiction reader such as myself, Ted Lewis is the author who inspired Brit Noir and gave us one of the best noir novels and noir protagonist ever written. Maybe the best.

 I knew nothing about Ted Lewis outside of Jack's Return Home and the film Get Carter and was immediately interested when a Facebook posting alerted me to Nick Triplow's book, Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir.  Nick's chronicling of Lewis' very short 42 years on earth is an impressive accomplishment and for those of us who appreciate Lewis' writing very welcome. There isn't much in the way of documentation available about Lewis but Triplow was able to draw on the memories of those who know Lewis and extrapolate from the environment in which Lewis grew up and what was happening around him.

I give some of the book's highlights below but you really need to read Getting Carter in the whole. Tripow's book is is an uncompromising looks at Ted Lewis, a deeply flawed genius, doomed like one of his noir characters.

Lewis grew up around Barton-upon-Humber in Lincolnshire, UK. These northern locals — Hull, Doncaster, Scunthorpe, Mablethorpe — figured in Lewis' writing. What emerges from his schoolboy years is that Ted was obsessed with jazz, films, comics, and crime magazines. His interest in music led him to learn jazz piano and play in local bands. After grammar school he attended art school where he was an accomplished if unstructured student where drinking, music, films, and chasing girls took precedence over completing assignments in a timely fashion. These predilections, particularly the drinking, followed Lewis throughout his life. The drink led to two failed marriages.

Ted's interest in film stayed with him. He worked as an illustrator for a while but got into animation, working on episodes of a Lone Ranger cartoon. He also had an important role on the animated feature, Beatles' Yellow Submarine (1968), where he had the important role of clean-up supervisor. It was especially important because of the number of animators hired to do bits of the production. Lewis and his team brought consistency to the work.

Though he had no experience as a screen writer, Lewis was later hired to write scripts for the gritty crime drama, Z Cars. He didn't write for the later series, The Sweeney, but he felt it ripped him off. The two main characters in The Sweeney are Jack Regan and George Carter which Lewis took as a reference to his character Jack Carter. I've watched all the seasons (series if you British) of The Sweeney and it would have benefited from Lewis' writing. He was also commissioned to write a story arc for Doctor Who and completed three scripts. The scripts were never filmed because they didn't quite match the mood the BBC was going for at the time.

Lewis' first book was the autobiographical All the Way Home and All the Night Through which was met with some critical success. But it was with the 1970 publication of Jack's Return Home that made Lewis a bestselling author and, importantly, for us crime fiction readers, created the British noir school of writing. Jack's Return Home is set in [unnamed] Scunthorpe and is a staggering counter to the traditional British crime story. Jack Carter is an enforcer for a London mob family. He returns home after the death of his brother. The circumstances of the death are suspicious and Jack starts to look into it. In this he runs afoul of the local criminal element who are allied with his London bosses. He is warned off but can't let go. Jack Carter isn't a nice person. He's amoral, violent, ruthless, and misogynistic and quite unlike any protagonist preceding him. He is a classic noir protagonist, ultimately doomed by his own actions. Seriously, if you appreciate noir and haven't read Jack's Return Home/Get Carter you need to get a copy.

Ted wrote two more Jack Carter books, prequels: Jack Carter's Law and Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon. Jack Carter's Law was well received but Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon is considered a much lesser book, written to pay the bills.

Lewis's last book is GBH (grievous bodily harm) which is a masterpiece of disturbing, stomach churning noir writing. The doomed noir protagonist is George Fowler, a London pornographer. Pornography also features in Jack's Return Home. Fowler is a paranoid psychopath who;s story is a descent into into madness. It is set in Mablethorpe, a seaside town where Lewis and his second wife lived for a time. Reading a description of their home in Mablethorpe I immediately saw Fowler's house in GBH.

For me, Jack's Return Home and GBH are essential noir reading and not just for Brit noir, I mean noir as a whole.

There is an interesting section in Getting Carter on the filming of Getting Carter. Lewis' contribution consists of noting that it is based on his book. It moves the action to Newcastle, an area the directors knows well amd makes other changes to the story but you know you are watching Jack's Return Home. Michael Caine is brilliant as Jack Carter though he doesn't much resemble the book's .Jack Carter. Lewis had hoped to write the screenplay but apparently was never considered. Given that this was Mike Hodges' first feature film and was produced in a very short time (10 months from concept to completion) it probably couldn't have handled a new director and new scriptwriter at the same time. It wasn't promoted very well but has since become acknowledged as a masterwork of noir film. As with the book, if you haven't seen the film and like film noir, you need to see it immediately.

Getting Carter has inspired me take down Derek Raymond's Factory series that have been gathering dust on my TBR shelf. Raymond (Robin Cook is his real name) is another Brit Noir author. He knew Lewis and owes a debt to him for his nameless detective in the Department of Unexplained Deaths, aka The Factory. David Peace, a Brit noir author known for his gritty noir Red-Riding Quartet, also acknowledges Lewis, calling Get Carter "the finest crime novel I've ever read". The Red-rRding Quartet is one of the most difficult series to get through I've ever read and I'm not sure I'm up to a second reading

Keywords: noir, biography, British crime writers, Derek Raymond, David Peace