Pipe Dream
A Novel
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The lawyer turned on the tape recorder, handed his client a cigarette, and lit it for him. Black drew hard, squinting as the smoke rushed into his lungs.
"Where do you want to start?"the lawyer said, lighting a cigarette of his own.
"I guess there’s only one place to start; at Broad and Erie."
Johnny Podres, a politician whose record against corruption had been propelling him straight to the mayor’s office, is found murdered in a North Philly crack house.
Enter Samuel Jackson, a.k.a. Black, a drug addict who knows better, a man embittered by the fact that he can’t seem to escape from his addiction to crack cocaine or, for that matter, from himself. Though he was once a family man with a wife and son, Black’s only concern these days is getting his next high, that is, until he stumbles across a friend and fellow addict, Leroy, and both become prime suspects in the Podres murder. Black and Leroy hook up with two female pipers: Clarisse, a registered nurse who is slowly losing to crack any semblance of a respectable life, and Pookie, who already has lost it. Soon the hunt is on for all four as they try to stay one step ahead of a police department under tremendous pressure to solve the case—because if a killer isn’t found soon, this could blow up into one of the biggest scandals in Philadelphia history.
Solomon Jones weaves a suspenseful story against the backdrop of corruption in the Philadelphia police department and centers it on a group of drug addicts who, in the process of fleeing the law, come to terms with their own addiction, leading to some devastating consequences.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First-timer Jones travels deep into the drug-fueled underworld of a grim urban Philadelphia in this energetic novel, a neo-noir voyage into violence and injustice. When a popular Puerto Rican city councilman with a stellar anti-corruption record is shot dead in a Philly crack house in September 1992, a citywide manhunt begins. The targets of the hunt are four luckless crack addicts, innocent but doomed by association and reputation. The down-and-out addict and petty thief Leroy was on the scene, along with his sort-of girl, Pookie. Desperate, he turns to his sharper pal Black for help, who in turn involves Clarisse, a still-employed nurse who has only recently turned to crack. The cops pursue all four, looking to wrap the case up fast and easy (while concealing a secret plot of their own). Going back and forth between characters, hunters and hunted, Jones produces a mix like Dragnet meets Chester Himes, stamped by his own experience on the streets. The chase is compelling, but even more involving is the way Jones slowly reveals each character's story, presenting in convincing and heartbreaking detail how each was sucked into dead-end addiction. Clarisse and Black's romance and redemption is too neatly conceived, but this is a promising debut effort. Jones clearly has the stuff to become a major chronicler of the mean streets.
