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Rating:  - White Man's Justice, Black Man's Grief
This book seems so real w/all the things that have happened in America and how so much of it is still going on after all these years. I loved it!!!!!!!!
Rating: - real story
I really like this book it seemed like a true life story. I like all Donald Goines books it stories all seem realistic like he just talking about himself.
Rating:  - A page turner!!
This is the 5th book I have read by Mr. Goines. While this is not my favorite(Whoreson), this is still an excellent read. I was able to complete the book in 1 day! So often televsion shows and books sugar-coat prison life, this book is so real it makes you believe you are actually serving time with the others. Donald Goines has a way of dragging the reader into each book. It's sad that his collection only has 14 books. I must say he and Zane are neck and neck in the race of becmoing my favorite author!
Rating: - A real-life look inside the judicial system
In this story, like his others, Donald Goines succeeded in painting a clear, vivid, and lively picture of life behind bars from the black man's point of view during that time. If you really take in the message Goines gets across, you'll see it's much more than a man complaining about this, that, the man not giving him a break, etc. Chester (the main character) was fully aware of his crimes and knew he would be punished. The severity, however, is what got to him, and really set the story in motion. The supporting cast Goines brings is terrific; later on in the story Chester and a friend of his befriend a white inmate, and while everything is cool between the three of them, you can see the tension mount when it's time for two of them to go to the parole board and see about their releases. A story this authentic and true can only be told by someone who's either lived it, or has been around it, and Goines more than qualified to do the job.
Rating:  - His own worst enemy
Chester Himes, the main character in this book (based on a real life author who wrote about serving time), is caught with a concealed weapon and is sent to jail. While the author goes to great lengths to point out the racial injustice in the penal system the main problem is this man's own behavior. Actually this book shows that crime doesn't pay. In a sense the main character got what he deserved, he killed his wife and got away with it but wound up spending the rest of his life in jail anyway.
I'm not as convinced as some of the other reviewers that this book demonstrates the injustice of the penal system or is a "typical black man's experience". It does demonstrate that what comes around goes around. Chester Himes got what was coming to him.
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