Sunday, 11 June 2017

Signal Thirty-Two - Mackinlay Kantor

Mackinlay Kantor's Famous, High-Voltage Novel Of A Cop Whose Beat Is The Roughest District In The U.S.A. - Spanish Harlem!


BANTAM BOOKS A2029
NEW BANTAM EDITION FEBRUARY 1960 - 2ND PRINTING
(1ST BANTAM PRINTING FEBRUARY 1952)
NEW YORK, USA
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY RANDOM HOUSE SEPTEMBER 1950
ALSO PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY DOLLAR BOOK CLUB JANUARY 1951

NEW YORK

is the biggest city in the world and the toughest. The men on its police force are all kinds, from those who collect a percentage from the prostitutes and bookies, to the ones who deliver babies in squad cars and pull suicides off the bridges.

SIGNAL THIRTY-TWO

is the story of one man who tried hard to be a good cop in the squalid, stinking slums of New York's Spanish Harlem, where children offer themselves for sale for money to buy heroin, and the switch knife and the zip gun are the toys a boy grows up with.

SWIFT PACED AND STACCATO
REAL AS A SIREN'S SCREAM
-CLEVELAND NEWS

Saturday, 10 June 2017

A Sweet Sweet Summer - Jane Gaskell



SPHERE BOOKS 37850
1ST PRINTING 1971
LONDON, UK
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY HODDER & STOUGHTON 1969

The public execution of Ringo Starr

is the first demonstration of power by the aliens whose spacecraft hangs over Britain and seals off the country from the outside world. Out of the chaos the aliens have created emerges a new social order, dominated by mob rule drug farms, and gang warfare.

The hero is a teenage ponce, running a house which is part brothel and part headquarters for a group of Neo Nazi thugs. He operates in a derelict pop world, a savage parody of the permissive society, in which people make love and carve each other up with equal carelessness.

Friday, 9 June 2017

Protest : The Beat Generation And The Angry Young Men - Gene Feldman and Max Gartenberg

Rebels without a cause, they are shocked by nothing - defying society, conventions, the world, the 'beatniks' and the 'angries' speak their minds


PANTHER BOOKS 1075
1ST PRINTING JUNE 1960
LONDON, UK
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY SOUVENIR PRESS 1959

The 'beatniks' and the 'angry young men' are considered the logical spokesmen for our age.

Out of its chaos, they have fashioned some of the most brilliantly dynamic literature of our time.

Rebels without a cause...

*JACK KEROUAC
*COLIN WILSON
*NORMAN MAILER
*JOHN OSBORNE
*JOHN BRAINE
*CLELLON HOLMES
*JOHN WAIN
*KINGSLEY AMIS

Thursday, 8 June 2017

Black Rice - Katharine Sim

THE OPIUM TRADE IN MODERN MALAYA
a story of the operators who make vast profits from human misery and vice


ACE BOOKS H512
1ST PRINTING 1961
LONDON, UK
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY HODDER & STOUGHTON 1959

It is hard to imagine her rendering of the Malayan scene being bettered: the colouring is gorgeous without being lurid, the canvas packed with detail but never overcrowded.
-Times Literary Supplement

A very fine book...The central story tells of an attempt to smuggle large quantities of opium but readers will keep and remember this book because of its haunting description of Malayan life.
-Time and Tide

Wednesday, 31 May 2017

Hell's Angels - Jan Hudson

The full story of America's motorcycle 'Wild Ones'


NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY (NEL) FOUR SQUARE 2092
2ND PRINTING NOVEMBER 1967
(1ST printing September 1967)
LONDON, UK

They live on ton-up motorcycles-screaming across the roads of America, leaving behind a trail of drunken brawls, sexual assaults, destruction and terror.

They are Hell's Angels: a breed of wild young men who dress like pirates and wear Nazi emblems.

They defy law and order, live by their own violent code and dice with death every day.

Jan Hudson knows the Angels. He's mixed with them and their girls and heard their views on life, sex, violence-and, most important of all, motorcycles. His book is a startling inside picture of the most amazing rebels of the sixties.

Tuesday, 30 May 2017

Monkey Off My Back - Jack Brown

An ex-convict and drug addict relates his discovery of personal freedom


LAKELAND BOOKS 230
1ST PRINTING 1972
LONDON, UK

The former 'con man' was always finding the easy way to make money for his expensive drug habit...yet the trail of shady tricks and crime always led Jack to the same place - stone walls, iron bars and guards.

Having served more than seventeen years in prison Jack Brown tells an almost incredible story - beatings, fights, riots, murders, immorality of every sort. He talks about people he met: the Birdman of Alcatraz - Machine-gun Kelly - Al Capone and other legendary figures of the underworld.

Most of Jack's life has been spent in various institutions: attempts to cure his criminal habits and his drug addiction failed repeatedly. But outside prison walls waited his devoted wife and family who prayed and encouraged Jack to take God seriously.

There is no 'happy ever after' routine at the end of his story - just the miracle that God changed the depraved drug addict convict, gave Jack the determination that Jesus shall control his life - and he can't keep it a secret!

*Apparently Jack Brown is the person that Johnny Cash wrote Cocaine Blues about.

Monday, 29 May 2017

R.I.P. Benji "Yellow Benji" Melendez 1952-2017

Yellow Benji of The Ghetto Brothers

I know this blog is normally a book blog but after hearing the sad news today of the death of Benji "Yellow Benji" Melendez of the Ghetto Brothers, I though I'd post this, after all these JD books we all collect are pretty much all about gang members like him.  "Yellow Benji" was best known for brokering the gang truce in the Bronx and Harlem in 1971, when he was President of the Ghetto Brothers and lead guitarist of the Ghetto Brothers band. He was also in the 2015 documentary Rubble Kings. If you haven't seen the documentary or heard the album the Ghetto Brothers released, I urge you to do so, you really are missing out.

R.I.P Benji