Split Decision
Life Stories
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Award-winning actor, rapper, and producer Ice-T unveils a compelling memoir of his early life robbing jewelry stores until he found fame and fortune—while a handful of bad choices sent his former crime partner down an incredibly different path.
Ice-T rose to fame in the late 1980s, earning acclaim for his music before going on to enthrall television audiences as Odafin “Fin” Tutuola in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. But it could have gone much differently.
In this “poignant and powerful” (Library Journal, starred review) memoir, Ice-T and Spike, his former crime partner—collaborating with New York Times bestselling author Douglas Century—relate the shocking stories of their shared pasts, and how just a handful of decisions led to their incredibly different lives. Both grew up in violent, gang-controlled Los Angeles neighborhoods and worked together to orchestrate a series of jewelry heists.
But while Ice-T was discovered rapping in a club and got his first record deal, Spike was caught for a jewelry robbery and did three years in prison. As his music career began to take off, Ice made the decision to abandon the criminal life; Spike continued to plan increasingly ingenious and risky jewel heists. And in 1992, after one of Spike’s robberies ended tragically, he was sentenced to thirty-five years to life. While he sat behind bars, he watched his former partner rise to fame in music, movies, and television.
“Propulsive” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), timely, and thoughtful, two men with two very different lives reveal how their paths might have very well been reversed if they made different choices. All it took was a split decision.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
“There are so many layers to this story,” George Stroumboulopoulos says about his latest book club pick. “It’s not really a story about an artist’s life—it’s a story about life circumstances, choices, consequences.” In this deeply inspiring dual memoir, Ice-T and his friend Spike explore how two men in similar circumstances can take very different paths. T, of course, was one of L.A.’s first iconic rappers before he swerved into an acting career culminating in a two-decade-plus stint playing Detective Fin Tutuola on Law & Order: SVU. But before that, his specialty was quick-hit jewelry store robberies. An orphan from the age of 12, T lived by a set of inviolable rules: Don’t join a gang, keep your head straight, and always have an escape plan. So when hip-hop showed a way out, he was able to take it. Spike was a member of T’s string who went even deeper into criminal life, plotting increasingly elaborate heists until he inevitably was imprisoned for over three decades of hard time. Spike’s life is just as fascinating as his superstar friend’s, especially when religious revelations turn his life around. Hardcore but thought-provoking, Split Decision proves that every person has a story to tell.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two paths diverge to beget staggeringly different tales in this potent dual narrative about the cost of living dangerously. With the help of journalist Century, rapper Ice-T and his former, literal partner-in-crime Spike deliver a propulsive chronicle of the choices that shaped their lives, beginning with the smash-and-grab jewelry robberies that brought the two together in L.A. in their early 20s in the early 1980s. "Armed only with baby sledgehammers," Ice recalls, "we'd... smash the glass, filling bags with the loot and escaping without anyone in the store getting hurt." But after the violence escalated and a car crash left him nearly dead, Ice stepped away, changed gears, and pursued his rap, and eventual acting, career. While Ice's star was rising, Spike, blinded by "dollar signs," chose to "keep speeding in the fast lane" and ended up in prison for a 1992 jewelry store heist that went awry when a member of his crew murdered a customer. As they chart their trajectories through alternating perspectives—with Ice eventually landing a recurring role on Law & Order: SVU and Spike serving 23 years behind bars before helping at-risk youth after his release—what unfolds is less a story of redemption than a raw testament to life's consequential decisions. This grave and astonishing account will leave fans in awe.
