Got

January 1, 2007
At the start of the pseudonymous D's gritty, streetwise debut, written in the second person, a 24-year-old bagman working for a Brooklyn mobster gets ripped off by a stripper in a seedy club. Thereafter the bagman desperately scrambles to recover the haul and return to grace. Solid writing and unrelenting, brutal detail liven up an otherwise standard gangsta plot. The offhand "Then you killed a man over a bag of money that ain't even yours" is merely a precursor to "You've now killed four people in six hours" as the body count escalates and the payback roars out of control. This first release from the Armory, a new imprint showcasing modern urban noir, is sure to appeal to the audience that has made Akashic's city-themed anthology series (Brooklyn Noir, etc.) a hit.

Starred review from December 1, 2006
There's a new player stepping into the street-lit spotlight, and he's one to watch. Atlanta native D writes the first title rolled out by Akashic's new street-lit imprint, the Armory, edited by novelist Kenji Jasper. The book is patterned after post-World War II hard-boiled pulp novels, and the story line carries a hint of Mickey Spillane's shadowy world of tough guys and sexy dames. The work's nameless narrator, who tells his story in an odd variation that substitutes "you" for "I", is overwhelmed by out-of-this-world sex with an exotic dancer. The 23 year old, a longtime collector for Brooklyn's most lethal criminal, Tony Star, soon realizes that he's been playedliterally, with his pants downwhen the femme fatale and her crew rob him of a quarter million dollars. But the narrator's good standing leads to a 24-hour postponement of his execution, and he rushes against the clock to retrieve the money, dealing out brutal payback in a suspense thriller that's more than a street-lit shocker. Nothing is clear until the final pages, when readers find out who is pulling the strings behind the cold-blooded betrayal. Urban libraries have to get "Got". [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ" 10/1/06.]Rollie Welch, Cleveland P.L.

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