“A pulp-fiction triumph worthy of Jim Thompson or James Ellroy. I can’t remember the last time I turned pages so eagerly.”
GBH by Ted Lewis. Afterword by Derek Raymond.
The swan song of a noir master finally gets its due. GBH, the late Ted Lewis' final and some say greatest (I might argue for another) novel, is finally getting its day in court and the critics are placing it where it belongs, in the cannon, among the pulp and noir greats.
So here's what's being said:
NPR's FRESH AIR — "Gangsters, Goons, and 'Grievous Bodily Harm' in Ted Lewis' London"
NPR Fresh Air critic John Powers writes that, "At his best, [Lewis] achieves something only a handful of crime writers ever do — the chilling sense of cosmic fatality that links noir anti-heroes to the likes of Oedipus and Macbeth" and of Lewis' celebrated, claustrophobic, and brutal Get Carter he writes, "Get Carter is one of the best-ever fictional portraits of a small, industrial English city with its tawdry shops, dingy rooming houses, and suffocating air of decline from something that wasn't that great to begin with."
You can listen to the whole piece on Lewis HERE.
BOOKPAGE
Simple and to the point, BookPage dubs GBH: "Lewis' masterpiece."
THE LIFE SENTENCE — "The Grievous Life of Ted Lewis"
Lisa Levy's brilliant new crime and mystery fiction focused website published a wonderful, and thorough, piece on Lewis and GBH by Brian Greene, which among other things, says: "While [Get Carter] will likely always be the most noted of Ted Lewis’s nine novels, GBH, the final book Lewis published, is his masterwork."
That rest can be read HERE.
THE BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW — "Ted Lewis and His Kitchen Sink Thrillers"
The online literary review of the nation's largest brick & mortar bookstore chain, and the company where I had my first book related job, ran a terrific review by Charles Taylor about the Carter Trilogy and GBH. Taylor pulls no punches: "Lewis remains a sharp social anatomist of the hopelessness and soul-sucking dinginess of his era. Starting with [Get Carter], Lewis sketched the horror of a Britain where home was the kitchen sink, the sodden bar towel, the decrepit industrial landscape."
You can read the rest of Charles Taylor's review HERE.
And hopefully there's more to come!