Customer Reviews

Go Down Dead

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GO DOWN DEAD (GDD) is lengendary novelist Shane Stevens's ("I am a novelist that's my punishment for living...") very first attempt at successfully publishing a novel! In fact, it is the first of three novels (out of a total of seven novels) written as by Stevens/Rider concerning characters trapped in the terrifying ghetto jungle of New York City (the other two novels being Way Uptown in Another World (1971) and Rat Pack (1974)).

GDD was written several years before it was finally published in its entirety in hardcopy first edition in December 21, 1966 by William Morrow and Company of New York. Because the novel was published so close to the end of the year (1966), it was sometimes listed in articles/references as being published the following year (1967). The Pocket Books' first edition paperback, published May 1968, makes this mistake (as does Contemporary Authors' 1977 biographical article on Shane Stevens).

For all you book collectors out there: The William Morrow dust jacket artwork is a collector's dream, i.e., it is magnificently powerful in that it features a black man's face (the color of rich chocolate) set against a black background. The top third of the jacket is in a deep, rich purple. The book's title is written in BIG white letters with the last leg of the letter "A" in DEAD entending down the front cover and ending with an arrowhead pointing down.

The novel tells the story of the last eight days in the life of King Henry, a sixteen year old black gang leader who is earning money to buy a stick of dynamite for a rumble. At the end of the novel King Henry desperately plans to use the dynamite in the very same way David Morrell's lengendary charactor Rambo desperately intended in First Blood (1972). Rambo was not successful; in the case of King Henry, the reader ultimately decides for himself/herself if he is successful or not!

A word to the reader: Starting the novel, at least the first few pages, is somewhat challenging in that it is told in a first-person narriative and written in the same ghetto dialect as spoken by its young black protagonist King Henry. For me an example quote that best sums up the novel, written in the same ghetto dialect of King Henry is: "I is a four time loser that what I is. No money and no friends and no edgecation and I is a black nigguh bastud." Please be assured, however, as you continue to read, the difficulty, soon disappears (similar to reading the captions in a foreign film).