Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun: The Autobiography of a Career Criminal - Hardcover

Smith, Noel "Razor"

4.19

206 ratings by Goodreads

9781556525711: Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun: The Autobiography of a Career Criminal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556525710 ISBN 13: 9781556525711

Publisher: Chicago Review Press, 2005

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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.

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Review:

""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
"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

From the Author:

I was born in London, on Christmas Eve 1960. My parents are both from Dublin, which, under Section 2 of the Irish Constitution, makes me an Irish citizen. Having grown up in London I class myself as London-Irish. My early years were spent in the slums of Islington, before my family were re-housed in a council flat in Lambeth.

At the age of fourteen I was arrested, beaten, and framed for burglary by the police. As a result of this, and despite being cleared by the courts, I drifted into petty crime. After several appearances in juvenile court for theft, TDA, and 'being a suspicious person' (the notorious 'sus' law), I was given a taste of the Short Sharp Shock, 3 months at a detention centre. Her Majesty's Detention Centre, Send, was infamous for its brutal regime, with both physical and mental violence meted out on a daily basis. I rebelled, and learned to harness my absolute hate of 'the system' in order to get me through.

At the age of 16 I appeared at the Old Bailey, on charges of armed robbery, possession of a firearm and GBH. I pleaded guilty and was sentenced the three years detention under Section 53/2 of the CYP Act 1933, the wording of which was "Any young person under the age of 17, who is convicted of a crime that would warrant fourteen years imprisonment, or more, for an adult". 'Though I was serving the equivalent of four borstal sentences back to back, the only place I could be detained was in a closed borstal.

I served my sentence in the gladiator schools of Ashford, Dover, and Rochester borstals, where horrific violence was the norm and the weak and timid became no more than prey. Determined to escape, I seriously assaulted a night watchman and ended up in strip cells and solitary confinement for months, where I finally learned to read and write.

Released in 1980, I gathered a gang around me and set out to take revenge for the years I had been locked up. Gang fights and petty crime became my milieu. After I was seriously beaten by a rival gang, and, having met the love of my life and got her pregnant, I decided to take up serious crime for financial gain. Bank robbery became my career.

Throughout the 1980s and 90s I was sentenced to a total of nineteen years, with hundreds of years in concurrent sentences, for armed robbery, firearms, and prison escape. In prison I began to educate myself. I gained an A-level in Law, an Honours Diploma in freelance journalism, and four Koestler Awards for my writing.

In 1997 I was released on parole, and in 1999 I once again appeared at the Old Bailey and was sentenced to eight life sentences for bank robbery, under the two-strikes act. 'A Few Kind Words and A Loaded Gun' is my first book. I am currently residing at HMP Grendon, and working on 'Fixing It', the follow up.

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