A Rusty Gun
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4.5 • 12 Ratings
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
As a gun-wielding bank robber, Noel 'Razor' Smith was top of the criminal tree, enjoying the excitement and benefits of a dangerous and adrenalin-filled career. But he'd also spent the greater part of his adult life in prison, an environment where respect and basic survival were guaranteed only to those prepared to use the most brutal violence. In his new book, Smith takes the story on from his highly acclaimed memoir A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun, and describes how he came to realize that the game wasn't worth the candle. In his mid-forties he applied to enter Grendon, then the only prison in Britain offering intense therapeutic treatment to hardened criminals. He went from a brutal high-security prison, HMP Whitemoor, to an institution where he was encouraged to investigate just why his life had been given over to violence and crime. Smith paints an unforgettable portrait of the hardened and severely damaged inmates of Grendon, many of them guilty of famous crimes, and their attempts to turn round their lives. And in particular his own arduous five-year journey to re-enter society as a straight citizen.
Customer Reviews
Change and redemption
I couldn't put this book down or his first one either and read them both in two days after reading an extract from the second one, this one, in The Times. The books made me proud to be human and ashamed of our prison system. It also made me proud of my own profession, journalism, and the role played by will self in bringing these books to our shelves. My own little bookshop was v sniffy and said they didn't stock 'this kind of thing' when I asked for them, but they eventually agreed reluctantly to order them. In future I will buy all books for my ipad I think. Maybe the ipad is the metaphorical gun we readers can hold to the heads of snotty bookshops. This gave my a teeny idea of the kind of disapproval criminals must live with all their lives. It also gave me a sense of pleasure at the unexpected thrill of seeking to do something clearly regarded in my bubble of a burb as beyond the pale. Anyway I will carry the lessons I learned from travelling with Noel through his terrible journey for the rest of my life and try never, ever to feel sorry for myself about anything, ever again. If every teenager was made to read these books and also go on Cambridgeshire speed traffic courses before adulthood, I reckon we would in any case be able to shut most of our prisons down.