Rollin' is the story of a crime syndicate operating from Kansas City's gritty urban core. It's a realistic portrayal of the crime, drugs and violence that has swept down like a plague on the urban areas of many American cities. The language is raw, the dialog honest. Rollin' With The Hot Sauce reveals the fictionalized character types that were brought to life and made all too real through the B.E.T. television series American Gangster, and the movie of the same name starring Denzel Washington. The story opens at the Byron Hotel, widely known and recognized as the headquarters for TC and his gang of criminals that the local press has labeled The Black Mafia. TC is a mastermind of the wrong kind. He and his closest associate Rufus, have formed an organization that's taken over the neighborhood. He says his hold card is fear and the east side is scare to death. The book takes the reader to the streets and shows with shocking detail the mayhem that crime wrecks on a community and the madness in the minds of those who choose to play the street life. Meanwhile Jamal, aka, Preston Robinson, transforms himself from notorious gangster and known killer into would-be revolutionary. He thinks the police have killed one too many innocent black men and he decides it's time to get even. TC's syndicate makes strategic connections with organizations and black gangsters in Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, and Omaha with aspirations of heading a nationwide crime syndicate headquartered in KC. All the while Jamal and his band of revolutionaries are virtually unnoticed and overlooked until members of the LAPD start coming up dead. The old saying of the chickens coming home to roost is a fitting description of the books final few scenes. Rollin' With The Hot Sauce deals with issues both real and imagined of police brutality, race, violence and crime in an uncompromising fashion. It fills in the blanks between the nightly newscast, the Hollywood version of events and the real life tragedies that play out daily on city streets from sea to shinning sea.
About the Author: Rollin' is my second book and first novel. My first was a memoir titled Coming Clean: A Tale Told From The Heart written under the name of Bakari Shabazz. My third book is titled Cape Coast: Coming Home Through The Door of No Return and details my first visit to the west African nation of Ghana in 2003. I'm waiting for a response from Third World Press regarding publication. I also self published a book while living in Ghana in 2013 titled The African Guide to Success in America. I am working on a book of short stories, essays and poems that i hope to complete by the end of 2015. Chapter 20 in my first book, Coming Clean is titled The Black Mafia. It is about a real organization that operated in KC in the late 1960s and early 70s that was talked about in a Readers Digest Magazine article June 1972 issue. Rollin' is in no way about the actual organization, but I grew up in the neighborhood where these things actually took place and they weren't done in secret so most in my generation that had any street cred knew about these events. They took place in various cities around the nation and may still exist in some form or fashion. Rollin' is a fictionalized tale of the kinds of activities that we all know too much about.