The tale of a crime lord that’s as vicious, graphic and entertaining as anything out there today.
A generation ago, Nicky Barnes was notorious as Harlem’s prime retailer of quality heroin. Now he tells his gripping story.
Of course, it must not be the whole story, but what there is smacks of attitude. It is a chronicle of Barnes’s thug life, complete with his crew, his women, his warriors and his enemies on both sides of the law. It’s low life living the high life, tax-free, with lots of freaky sex, many penthouse apartments, pricey cars and heavy bling before it was called bling. Barnes was featured in a lead piece in the New York Times Magazine and inspired the hit “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” Back in the day, he says, the city was his. Learning from the mob, he formed a Council to manage the distribution of drugs and eliminate any DEA snitch who was fingered by his potent counterintelligence. We learn, in pointed language, of booze, weed and guns. The ways of each mo-fo and of every ho is sharply etched. Eventually, his “continuing criminal enterprise” collapsed. (Insufficient family values, Barnes supposes.) The author went to federal prison and when he couldn’t run the Council (or his women) from the joint, he destroyed it (and them). Now, still proud of his superior intelligence, he is in the witness protection program. His fierce text says virtually nothing of the effect of his enterprise on the customers he supplied. That isn’t a concern in this brutal, scorching book.
The tale of a crime lord that’s as vicious, graphic and entertaining as anything out there today.Pub Date: March 6, 2007
ISBN: 1-59071-041-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Rugged Land
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2007
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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