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This page lists novels by Ted Lewis.

The cover images are for the first edition and for a recent paperback or digital edition.

All the Way Home and All the Night Through

Ted Lewis

1965

"Victor Graves is in his last year at Hull Art School. The handsome pianist for a jazz ensemble that plays the local pub circuit, Victor has a way with words and women, but struggles with personal demons—alcohol chief among them—that increasingly get the better of him. But Victor’s wildness meets its match in the gorgeous and sensitive Janet, whose hard-to-get routine awakens in Victor a desire to leave-off his rakish ways. But Victor’s caddish life as top man on campus comes screeching to a halt after graduation, when booze, lack of focus, and deep-seated insecurities slowly get the better of him. Jobless and increasingly alienated from Janet and his friends, Victor lets his misanthropic tendencies grow stronger, until they are unbearable. All the Way Home and All the Night Through is a stirring portrait of a young man inadvertently tearing down himself and those he holds dear.."

Jack's Return Home

Ted Lewis

1970

A Jack Carter novel.

This novel was the basis of the film Get Carter. Following the success of the film the book was published in paperback as Carter and subsequently has usually been published as Get Carter.

"Jack Carter is home for a funeral - his brother Frank's. Frank's car was found at the bottom of a cliff, with Frank inside. He was not only dead drunk but dead as well. What could have made sensible Frank down a bottle of whisky and get behind the wheel? For Jack, his death doesn't add up. So he decides to talk to a few people, do some sniffing around. He does, but is soon told to stop. By Gerald and Les, his bosses from the smoke. Not to mention the men who run things in Doncaster, who aren't happy with Jack's little holiday at home. They want him back in London, and fast. Now Frank was a mild man and did as he was told, but Jack's not a bit like that."

Plender

Ted Lewis

1971

"Two men share a common history. Growing up together in the small town of Barton-Upon-Humber in Lincolnshire, England, Peter Knott is everything that Brian Plender wishes he were. Knott is suave, good-looking, an exemplary student and popular. The friendship they maintain is as important to Plender as it is forgettable to Knott, and this eventually leads to a lasting humiliation for Brian. Years later Brian Plender is a dangerous man. A private investigator who specializes in extortion, blackmail, and intimidation, Plender is a manipulative psychopath capable of anything. Knott meanwhile is a man adrift. His wandering eye, array of fetishes, and a taste for younger women, has led Knott through a series of sordid affairs. The two haven't met in years so Brian is surprised to spot Peter at a seedy bar with a girl too young to be his wife and he decides to follow the pair. Plender relives the humiliations of his youth just as Knott finds himself on the wrong side of the law in the most horrific way imaginable. Starting out as a long-lost friend and slowly, carefully, revealing himself to be anything but that."

Billy Rags

Ted Lewis

1973

"It’s the 1960s and Billy Cracken is a hard man to keep locked up. An austere and troubled childhood has given way to life as a hardened criminal and now status as one of the most feared prisoners in England. He has been moved from one maximum security prison to the next. Guards and inmates alike fear and begrudgingly respect the powerfully-built Cracken. But a life doing his porridge, even if as a minor celebrity, isn’t the one he wants. A girlfriend and a child await Cracken on the outside and he’ll stop at nothing to get to them. While plotting his escape he crosses a powerful mobster who vows to make Cracken’s life hell, and if nothing else succeeds at making his escape all the more difficult, something the ever-rebellious Cracken defiantly relishes."

Jack Carter's Law

Ted Lewis

1974

A Jack Carter novel.

"It’s the late 1960s in London and Jack Carter is the top man in a crime syndicate headed by two brothers—Gerald and Les Fletcher. He’s also a worried man. The fact that he’s sleeping with Gerald’s wife, Audrey, and that they plan on someday running away together with a lot of the brothers’ money, doesn’t have Jack concerned. Instead it’s an informant—one of his own men—that has him losing sleep. The grass has enough knowledge about the firm to not only bring down Gerald and Les but Jack as well. Jack doesn’t like his name in the mouth of that sort. It should be an easily solved problem for London’s suavest fixer, except for one slight problem: Jack has no idea where the grass is hiding."

The Rabbit

Ted Lewis

1975

"Victor is an art student. Clacker is a tough Teddy Boy. Working in his dad's quarry, Victor wants to be one of the lads, Clacker decides not. Victor is uncertain of his masculinity, Clacker is not. In a workplace riven with bullying and sexual bravado, the two confront each other."

Boldt

Ted Lewis

1976

"Roy Boldt is a bad cop. Corrupt. Violent. An extreme racist with a drinking problem. He is a man alone, outside of all the worlds he inhabits, and respected only by those who fear him. Boldt is too proud to bow down to the mob and too wicked to be a good cop. Roy’s brother is the opposite: A seemingly shining light for good and a progressive political candidate. Roy thinks otherwise. He knows his brother too well. But none of that matters when an anonymous threat is handed over to the police. Someone is promising to kill Roy’s brother when he stops in town while on campaign. Boldt navigates a brutal chain of night clubs, halfway houses, and mobbed-up hotels in order to find those plotting to kill his brother. In the half-light of this lurid underworld he stumbles onto a conspiracy that will put him at odds with just about everything and everyone."

Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon

Ted Lewis

1977

A Jack Carter novel.

"Jack Carter is not thrilled when his frustratingly unprofessional employers—London mob kingpins Gerald and Les Fletcher—force him to take a vacation. Jack doesn’t like leaving the business in other people’s hands, but the company villa in Spain promises sunshine and some time to plot his next move. Jack soon finds he is on anything but a vacation. The villa is already inhabited by a cowardly house steward and a knuckle-dragging American gangster. Jack has apparently been sent to protect the American, who has turned informant. There are few things that Jack Carter hates more than surprises. Informants being chief among them."

GBH

Ted Lewis

1980

"George Fowler heads a lucrative criminal syndicate that specializes in the production and distribution of 'blue films' - nasty illegal pornography. Fowler is king, with a beautiful girl at his side and a swanky penthouse office, but his entire world is in jeopardy. Someone is undermining his empire from within, and Fowler becomes increasingly ruthless in his pursuit of the unknown traitor. As his paranoia envelops him, Fowler loses trust in just about everyone, including his closest friends and associates, and begins to rely on the opinions of an increasingly smaller set of advisors. Juxtaposed with the terror and violence of Fowler's last days in London is the flash-forward narrative of his hideout bunker in a tiny English beach town, where Fowler skulks during the off-season amongst the locals, trying to put together the pieces of his fallen empire. Just as it seems possible for Fowler to reclaim his throne, another trigger threatens to cause his total, irreparable unravelling."