Donald Goines's powerful first novel in the Kenyatta series lays bare the bloody, brutal world of crime in the black ghetto—where, as Goines puts it, "kindness is the sweetest con of all." Here is the gutsy and often shocking world of Billy and Jackie, prison buddies on the streets and hot on the trigger.
“All those [other black] writers, no matter how well they dealt with black experience, appealed largely to an educated, middle-class, largely white readership. They brought news of one place to the residents of another. Goines’s novels, on the other hand, are written from ground zero. They are almost unbearable. It is not the educated voice of a writer who has, so to speak, risen above his background, it is the voice of the ghetto itself.” —Michael Covino, The Village Voice
- ISBN13 9780870679865
- Publish Date 1 May 2007 (first published 1 October 1995)
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 23 May 2013
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Melrose Publishing Company
- Imprint Holloway House Publishing,U.S.
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 192
- Language English