Bøger udgivet af Melrose Publishing Company

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' 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

Johnny Washington, a black teenager in Los Angeles, knows the freight yard like the back of his hand. He and his pals, Josh and Buddy, hit them often, stealing for a fence. They have to. They're the soul support of their families. But when Josh is killed by a security guard (who gets his brains scattered by Buddy with nunchaku sticks), they are forced to look for other work. They find it with the underworld kings in Elliot Davis. But when Davis recruits Johnny's sister for his stabke and later OD's her, Johnny and Buddy come on with a vengeance. "He lived by the code of the streets and his books vividly recreated the street jungle and its predators." -New Jersey Voice