Mr Nice - Softcover

Marks, Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749395699 ISBN 13: 9780749395698

Publisher: Vintage, 1997

Synopsis

The incredible story of an unconventional life

During the mid 1980s Howard Marks had forty three aliases, eighty nine phone lines and owned twenty five companies throughout the world.

At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to thirty tons of marijuanna, and had contact with organisations as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA and the Mafia. Following a worldwide operation by the Drug Enforcement Agency, he was busted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison at the Terre Haute Penitentiary, Indiana. He was released in April 1995 after serving seven years of his sentence. Told with humour, charm and candour, Mr Nice is his own extraordinary story.

About this title

Review:

What an extraordinary fellow Howard Marks is. His autobiography takes him from his South Wales childhood and Oxford University education through his life dealing marijuana and the enormous mythology that accrued around what the tabloids called "the English Toff Drugs King of the World". This book is called Mr Nice after one of the many aliases Marks's life as a merchant of pot obliged him to assume, but it describes him perfectly too: the epitome of British niceness, the nicest international criminal you could hope to meet. It's not hard to see why this has become a cult book--Marks is a brilliant version of a mate down the pub, telling you the gobsmacking stories of his many adventured life. The writing is direct and the narrative will detain you as comprehensively as Marks himself was detained for seven years at Terre Haut Penitentiary, Indiana. He was released the same day as Mike Tyson. "I had," he observes mildly, "been continuously in prison for the last six-and-a-half years for transporting beneficial herbs from one place to another, while he had done three years for rape." Truly there is no justice; but there are eye-popping adventures, hilarious touches and a thorough-going wisdom in this excellent book. --Adam Roberts

Review:

"Frequently hilarious, occasionally sad, and often surreal" (GQ)

"A man who makes Peter Pan look like a geriatric with sleeping sickness" (Loaded)

"A folk legend... Howard Marks has huge charisma. He sounds like Richard Burton and looks like a Rolling Stone" (Daily Mail)

"A racy yarn with plenty of globe trotting colour" (Christopher Hirst The Independent)

"Marks weaves a fascinating story spiced with brilliant detail, far stronger than fiction" (FHM Magazine)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0749395699
• ISBN 13: 9780749395698
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 560