Black Gangster
Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1972. Paperback Original. Octavo. (17.5 cm. x 10.5 cm.) 280 pp. Illustrated paper wrappers. Advertisements at rear. Minor rubbing to front cover image. Verso with long crease. Mild toning to pages. Overall, bright and tight. Near Fine. Item #200
Donald Goines specialized in urban, gangster revenge plots and was influenced by the slick and filthy realism in the writing of former pimp turned writer, Iceberg Slim. "Black Gangster" represents both Goines and publisher, Holloway House, at the peak of their literary influence. Goines, who had become an enormously popular writer of the urban Black Experience based his novels on what he knew best -- drug addiction, gangsters, racisim, crooks, dirty deals and nihilism. In other words, Goines, like Jim Thompson and Dashiell Hammett, was a master of "Noir". The novel "Black Gangster" traces the rise and fall of a young man from petty criminal to his rule over the underworld of Detroit. If it reminds you of the Great American Novel, that's because it is.
Price: $100.00