of the most influential, bestselling Black authors to date, comes a edition reissue of his timeless, page-turning, bullet-riddled tale... The bad news: He was born on the streets. The good news: No one can keep him down. The bad bad news: It's about to get real. Detroit, 1970s. Needles glitter the ground. Guns pop 24/7. Everyone's working an angle, especially the cops. Out of this gritty urban nightmare, one man rises from the filth, ready to seize his destiny by any means necessary . . . With ice in his veins and a stable of women to keep his money rolls thick and plenty, Earl the Black Pearl has every intention of staying at the top of the brutal empire he created. But when someone starts picking off his crew, all hell is about to break loose-because Earl isn't letting anyone threaten what he's worked so hard to build. With the streets about to blow up into a violent free-for-all, Earl knows what he has to do-take the enemy down, or die trying . . .