Richie, a tall, brown-skinned, curly-haired, im-poverished youth from Waltham Park in St Andrew, is the main character in this saga that exposes the ugly, violent and brutal roles some Jamaicans play in the drug business in parts of the United States.

Early in the 229-page book the author, Prince Kofi states that, "Jamaica contains two societies masquerading as one. You have the rich and affluent and the sufferer...the foundation of this social construct is the sufferer ... some of the most resilient and creative people in the world. For all their shortcomings, it's from this unlikely root, the dregs of society, that the people who make the Jamaican culture a unique culture of world renown arise."

Kofi says that many of the youths, out of desperation and lives of abject poverty "choose a life of crime ... willing to risk their lives for one chance at success, however temporary and fleeting" that success may be.

The story moves quickly into an encounter that Richie and his friend Blacka have in Premier Plaza with Jimmy Gorgon, a boy who made some money in the United States. Blacka is adamant that he wants "the gold teeth" that Jimmy has. The overwhelming desire to own the dentures cause him to be shot to death and Richie, although wounded, has to run to save his own life.

Runs through the cemetery

He escapes through the nearby church cemetery and "his chest paints a bright crimson streak of blood across the top of the wall as if paying a blood sacrifice of atonement to the dead for the desecration of their sanctuary."

Richie makes a narrow escape from the Jamaican police, who, the author writes, "is notoriously known to be a gang of cold-blooded killers."

He leaves Jamaica as a stowaway on a ship bound for New York City where he seeks, but does not receive any help from his uncle who resides there.

Almost immediately, Richie links up with Geeko, a gregarious Yardman who drives "a black tinted, kitted M5 BMW with gold plated grills and rims" and has obviously done well for himself in the United States. Geeko in turn is, as always, on the lookout for a recruit for his drug operation and Richie is hungry for the opportunity to make money.

And he does make money - lots of it. The drug business is accepted as a normal means through which the ghetto youths liberate themselves from the bondage of poverty.

It is an absorbing, violent and bloody story that unravels the peculiar intertwined relationships of the drug don, Donovan Chinqwee, Geeko, the other drug dealers, including Richie, and the women and men who became junkies by using crack cocaine.

Later in the story, Richie, the man from Waltham Park who once hid in a cesspool in Kingston to escape the law and who pays great attention to every detail, eventually gets rid of the competition. He sends for his old friends in Jamaica - Jah Blue, Stretch, Indian, Buju and Ray. They form a posse, call themselves the 'Yardies' and swear that they will never bow.

"We can't play games with nobody. Now is our chance to run things in America," Richie tells them. And they do ... for a while.

Richie and the posse recruit their own workers. Richie gets his own permanent gold tooth with a large diamond in it and with Blacka's name inscribed in his memory. He also has no problem in using his gold plated .45 to remove anyone who stands in his way. His drug business has tentacles that reach Philadelphia and Miami.

Never forgot his roots

Even with his wealth, however, Richie never forgot his roots and sent money for his mother and clothing and barrels of food "for the youth them from Ambrook Lane" in Jamaica.

"Where I come from, no one give sufferer a helping hand. Nuff youth and youth have to walk barefoot and them have to thief and rob just to buy shoes. So I an I a do what little I can with the blessing what reach me because as them say ,nothing too good last forever," he tells his American girlfriend, Tawana.

His words are almost prophetic. Soon the police and the Feds become very suspicious of the activities of the gang of "armed, dangerous, cold-blooded killers" and they move in to get rid of them.

Do the Feds succeed? What happens to Richie and the Yardies?

The end of the book is as gripping as the beginning.