Mr Nice: An Autobiography - Softcover

Marks, Howard

3.9

10,323 ratings by Goodreads

9781786890030: Mr Nice: An Autobiography

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1786890038 ISBN 13: 9781786890030

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, 2016

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

During the mid 1980s Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and owned 25 companies throughout the world. Whether bars, recording studios, or offshore banks, all were money laundering vehicles serving the core activity: dope dealing. Marks began to deal small amounts of hashish while doing a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford, but soon he was moving much larger quantities. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to 50 tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organizations as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA, and the Mafia. This is his extraordinary story.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of 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:

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

"A racy yarn with plenty of globe trotting colour." --Independent

"Frequently hilarious, occasionally sad, and often surreal." --GQ

"A man who makes Peter Pan look like a geriatric with sleeping sickness." --Loaded

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.