A multifaceted, realistic fictional picture of the lives, choices, and frustrations of underworld ghetto blacks. Larry Jackson, better known as Daddy Cool, is a ruthlessly efficient black hit man, equally effective with a gun or a knife in nailing his prey. The only thing that can melt his icy heart is his love for his teenage daughter, Janet. But when the smooth talking youngblood pimp Ronald lures her into his stable, Daddy Cool must go into action with a fearsome vengeance. "All those [other black] writers, no matter how well they dealt with black experience, appealed largely to an educated, middle-class, largely white readership. They brought news of one place to the residents of another. Goines' novels, on the other hand, are written from ground zero. They are almost unbearable.

It is not the educated voice of a writer who has, so to speak, risen above his background, it is the voice of the ghetto itself." --Michael Covino, The Village Voice.