LoveReading Says
Few of us stop to think about the effect a life of crime has on a gangster’s family. To the police, Spencer was a ‘villain’ who made a lot of money through the drug trade and other criminal activities. To society, he was a parasite, someone who preyed on the vulnerable, exploiting their desires and addictions for his own gain. To Jason, his son, he was simply ‘the old man’, a mystery, an absent father, and someone he wanted to look up to.
The Old Man and Me explores Jason’s journey into his father’s world as he discovers why a man who prized freedom would spend repeated and ever-lengthening periods in prison, and how he made a fortune yet ended up with nothing.
At times harrowing, this is, nevertheless, a revealing insight into a criminal underworld many would never imagine existed.
Matt Johnson
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The Old Man And Me Synopsis
Amsterdam, 2001. A shoot-out in the city's docklands leaves one man grievously injured and a rival drug dealer killed outright.
The injured man is Tony Spencer from Coventry. Aka The Old Man. Once a prolific businessman, he is now considered Public Enemy No. 1 by the National Crime Squad and the head of several smuggling rings operating between the UK, Holland, Morocco, and Spain. At the age of 50, with bank robberies, counterfeiting, and several fortunes gained and lost behind him, he is on the run and living abroad.
As Spencer's life hangs in the balance, his son Jason arrives in Amsterdam. While he prays for a miraculous recovery, he ponders who his father really is. He has raced anxiously to be by his bedside and yet he is somebody he doesn't know well at all.
Jason begins digging in earnest. He begins to piece together the story of The Old Man's life. It's a story that is riddled with contradictions: a man who makes millions but saves nothing, prizes freedom but spends years inside, works in a violent world but who - seemingly - avoids violence. Spencer was absent, often in prison, for much of his upbringing but now, as his father recovers from the shooting, Jason begins to wonder.
Maybe, if he can come to understand his father's life, he can begin to understand his own...
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About Jason Wilson
Jason Wilson is a married fater of two, and no longer mixes in criminal circles. He took a degree in psychology and is now a mental health worker.The nature of his work requires 24 hour shifts, and The Old Man and Me was written between shifts. He works with people with conditions such as autism, Asperger’s, brain injuries, paranoid schizophrenia, and amnesia. Some of them are ex-offenders.
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