Review: Gritty and absorbing, Not to be missed.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 14, 2013
This book contains all the gritty realism, allied with deep humanity, which I found in the other novel I read by this very talented author. The picture that it paints of nineteen eighties/nineties New York is certainly not one of a city I would recognise, but then I'm just a country boy and the lives depicted here are alien territory to me. Only on the surface though. Underneath the skin, the characters in this story of murderous doings in The Big Apple have all the same feelings of love, hate, loyalty and jealousy that have been the lot of all people since the time of the cavemen.All these things are brought out and presented to the reader in this book. If this writer has the skill, (which he undoubtedly does), of making a simple rural soul like me feel a real sense of involvement with the strivings and dilemmas of metropolitan American gang members, how much more relevant is his work going to be to people living in the environments he describes? It is one of the hallmarks of a great writer to be able to get readers, from all backgrounds, to feel a sense of kinship with his characters. Kawand Crawford easily passes that test and possesses the hallmark.