Calling Get Carter a classic is like carrying coals to Newcastle. The elements required for an iconic film came together perfectly: a heavy-lidded heavy Michael Caine; its unforgettable spit-and-soot locale; Roy Budd's pulsating soundtrack; the slow-simmer to boil screenplay and direction of Mike Hodges.
Sometimes forgotten in all this is the gritty book Get Carter is based on – Jack's Return Home, by Ted Lewis in 1970. This is something Nick Triplow looks to redress in his biography of the author, who died aged 42 in 1982 from effects of alcoholism, leaving behind a small body of work, and a life coiled in frustration despite his early springboard with the Carter adaptation. Triplow believes the book is "the greatest British crime novel of its era", and Lewis's last novel GBH (1980) is "...as fundamental a commentary on the human experience as Camus' The Stranger." The last statement is as big a leap as Newcastle being Michael Caine's home town in Get Carter, but the reader is happy to go along thanks to Triplow's sympathetic portrayal.
