All the savagery and frenzy of New York's teenage gang world
FOUR SQUARE BOOKS 1319
LONDON, UK
1ST PRINTING 1965
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY SECKER & WARBURG 1959
"WHEN I COME WALKING DOWN THE STREET PEOPLE SAY 'HERE COME DUKE. HE COOL, HE GOT HEART.' WHEN THEY SEE ME STRUT THEY KNOW A RUMBLE IS ON."
'Here is a small masterpiece; the interior life of a teenage Harlem gangster whose fright and misery are expressed by going down in a rival gang on a fury of zip-guns and knives.'
-DAILY MAIL
'The sex life of the Crocodiles, and Duke's proprietorship of Lu Ann, the gang's fifteen year old tart, is the authentic slum jungle pattern.'
-NEW STATESMAN
'A tour-de-force in which a Negro boy, Duke Custis, tells in his own words . . . what it is like to lead a gang in Harlem. He spends the days he is describing by one means or another, selling reefers, a little light whoring in Central Park, to scrape together the money for a gun.'
-THE OBSERVER
