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A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun
A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun

A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun

The Autobiography of a Career Criminal

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY

496 Pages, 6 x 9

Cloth, $26.95 (US $26.95) (CA $37.95)

Publication Date: April 2005

ISBN 9781556525711

Rights: US & CA

Chicago Review Press (Apr 2005)

Sorry, this item is temporarily out of stock
 

Overview

"I never slashed a face that wasn't looking at me and I never robbed a bank that wasn't insured." —Razor Smith

Brutal and violent, this tell-all is a personal account of the life of Razor Smith and the world in which he lived, where ruthlessness, viciousness, and savagery are prized and admired. In prison more than half of his life for assaults and armed robberies, Smith became confined in a peculiar kind of hell from which his only route of escape was to master the art of writing. His book shows us a face of crime not often encountered in run-of-the-mill true-crime books: a face as tender and intimate as a lover's, yet as frightening as a killer's. Powerfully written from beginning to end, this is an extraordinarily vivid account of how a kid from South London became a career criminal, a blistering indictment of a system that brutalized young offenders, and an unsentimental acknowledgment of the adrenaline-fueled thrills of the criminal life. Shocking, fascinating, and horrifying, it also reveals Smith as one of the most talented writers of his generation.

Reviews

"Wry, brutally honest and at times just brutal, it's one of the most powerful and intelligent memoirs of a life of crime we've ever read." —GQ

"This is not another lame true crime book written by someone who has spent their life in an office. Razor Smith is the real thing: someone who has lived the life and lived to write about it. A Few Kind Words is a stunning book, filled with brutality, horror, and truth. It might be the best crime memoir ever written by an actual criminal." —James Frey, author, A Million Little Pieces

"Ruthlessly honest, trenchant about the life of crime and punishment, Razor's book is a genuine tour de force. Seldom does a memoir appear which has the capacity to introduce the ordinary reader to the criminal subculture without either romanticizing it or sensationalizing the material." —Will Self, author, Great Apes

Author Biography

Razor Smith has 58 criminal convictions and has spent most of his adult life in prison, where he taught himself to read and write, gaining an Honours Diploma from the London School of Journalism. He has received a number of awards for his writing and has contributed articles to the Big Issue, the Guardian, the Independent, Punch, the New Law Journal, and the New Statesman.

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