Lost crime classic from Clarence Cooper, Jr., a black crime writer from Detroit whose first novel, The Scene, was a literary sensation. Believed to be too raw, and possibly damaging to his literary career, The Syndicate was published under pseudonym in 1960, a hard-hitting, fast-paced story plunging into the psycho-sexual depths of a ruthless enforcer sent to retrieve syndicate money.

A childhood friend of Malcolm X, Cooper struggled with heroin addiction all his life, did most of his writing in jail, and died in NYC at the age of 44, alone and strung out, not far from his last known resident: the 23rd Street YMCA

PRAISE

"The U. S. landscape as gangscape, littered with the twisted & damaged psyche of a game rigged to take out all its players. A perversely brilliant celebration of the long downhill slide." Peter Maravelis, editor San Francisco Noir

"One of the most underrated writers in America, a Richard Wright of the revolutionary era." Black World/Negro Digest

"A rare figure in crime fiction — transgressive, fatalistic, echoing the forbidden in ways at once deadly violent, tongue-in-cheek, horrible and wonderful. . . " Domenic Stansberry, Hammett Prize Winning Author of the The White Devil

"Not even Nelson Algren’s Man with the Golden Arm burned with [this] ferocious actuality.". New York Herald-Tribune

“The man who should have been the black William Burroughs.” GQ

INQUIRE FOR GALLEYS. ARCS available to reviewers and bookstores.

RELEASE DATE: JUNE 15, 2018

INQUIRE FOR GALLEYS HERE. Advance Reading Copies available for reviewers and bookstores.