From Publishers Weekly
A little bit of moralizing laces the graphic sex and violence in this third street lit novel by Stringer, publisher of Triple Crown Publications and a former madam and drug dealer. The story spins around Raven "Red" Gomez, a victim of her stepfather's sexual abuse and her mother's rejection, for whom every relationship is another opportunity to con someone out of their cash. From duping her boyfriend Q into believing she's pregnant by using the urine of another woman, to conning her abusive, incarcerated ex out of royalties on his street novel, Red's "goal was to rich at all costs, regardless of who was hurt in the process". For Red, sex-however pleasurable-is a commodity traded for cash and power, children are a means to "catch" a man, and revenge for one's last double-cross is around every corner. This barely plotted tale (after Imagine This) serves up some suffering for the immoral Red, but a close getaway at the end promises a sequel.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Stringer's life story rivals her fiction for drama. Now considered the queen of street lit and featured in
Essence and the
New York Times, Stringer was once the cocaine queen of Columbus, Ohio. She wrote her first novel in prison, then self-published
Let That Be the Reason (2001) and
Imagine This (2004). Both became big hits with the hip-hop crowd, inspiring Stringer to establish her own publishing company, Triple Crown Publications. She now makes her hardcover debut with a calculatedly nasty yet redemptive tale of a ruthless woman warrior. The daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and an African American father, Red is smart, gorgeous, fearless, and mean, running elaborate daredevil scams while living a glamorous, if precarious, life. The source of her rampaging evil? Childhood sexual abuse. Red earns the tag "dirty" many times over as Stringer keeps readers riveted with graphic sex, dangerous characters, profanity-spiked dialogue, and nonstop trouble. Stringer's savvy street thriller has obvious appeal, and the cliff-hanger conclusion suggests that more Dirty Red tales are in the offing.
Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
