Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2014 November 12 • Wednesday

Soho Crime has done the world a big favor by reprinting all three of Ted Lewis's Carter novels. I read Jack's Return Home (Get Carter) a while back and was blown away by how good it was. Didn't seem to be much hope of a sequel, though, if you know what I mean. The other two books in the trilogy were out of print and quite expensive so I deferred hope of finding out how Carter comes back.

Now I know. He doesn't. Jack Carter's Law and Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon both take place before Jack's Return Home. And Jack Carter's Law is at least as good as the first book in the series.

Carter is the lieutenant to a couple of crime boss brothers. The brothers aren't too bright and they need Carter to run things for them. Lucky for them Carter is smart, experienced, tough and pretty damn unshakable.

Max Allan Collins, in an introduction to this reprinting, remarks that Carter makes Richard Stark's Parker "look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm". This doesn't seem fair to me. Carter and Parker are different but I think they would work together just fine. They share most of the same priorities and are both extremely competent and in control of themselves.

In Jack Carter's Law Carter's employers are about to lose everything, thanks to an informer who's handing the keys to the kingdom over to the police. Carter is like a gale-force wind blowing through London, trying everything he can think of to turn the situation around.

Not only does Lewis write scenes of action and violence in a dazzlingly understated fashion, he also gives Carter wicked senses of humor and irony. These two are not overdone. You won't be mistaking Carter for James Bond or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I was quite sad to reach the last page. Good thing there's another Carter book! The first line of Jack Carter's Law is "The parked Rover shudders and sways in the wet wind that races down Plender Street".