Daddy Cool (1974) – Donald Goines

Moving on from Richard Wright and Bigger Thomas, my options were

READ ON James Baldwin, Albert Camus, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Chester Himes, Donald Goines

A detour from the literature of the oppressed to the literature of philosophy seemed enticing, but I am pleased that Donald Goines came up as my next read rather than Camus. I feel that there is still much to explore in the literature of Black America.

Donald Goines got his start in writing in a similar way to Iceberg Slim. After a spell in prison, he decided to turn his life around by putting pen to paper. In fact, Goines was inspired by Iceberg and his autobiographical style. Goines started writing novels in 1972, and by 1974 when he was killed in a drug deal gone bad he had written 14 books, with two more published posthumously. Choosing a book from these wasn't straight forward, however – the must read section in Cult Fiction said

MUST READ Donald Goines wrote fiction the way other people package meat. There is little point in picking any of his titles as outstanding, since they are all formulaic. Equally however, they are all outstanding in that they are street-real and avoid the romanticism of many of the films and books about black life in America.

So without any recommendations to go on, I picked Daddy Cool from Goines' bio because it had the coolest name (even amongst titles such as Whoreson and Dopefiend).

Again, the library had no copies of Goines and I could find nothing in any of the town's second hand book stores. So I turned to Amazon. It was easily available there as a cheap paperback, cheaper than the postage in fact.

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I don't quite know what Cult Fiction meant when they claimed Donald Goines' stuff is "street-real". Daddy Cool is melodrama, with the merest nod towards realism. It is trash – but great trash. It cracks along and has a great voice.

Check it out:

Desperately the woman tried to turn and flee. She saw death bearing down on her in the form of a tall light-skinned black man. Before she could turn around, Daddy Cool made one of his swift underhand throws. The knife seemed to twist in the air twice before it came to rest between the large breasts of the woman. She groaned, then slumped over.

Realization finally came to the middle-aged black man. His eyes grew as large as picture windows when he saw the knife appear in the assassin's hand. He put his hands in front of himself and backed up.

"Wait a minute, mister, please!"

He began to scream as he saw the man draw back his arm to throw. His scream was cut off as the well-aimed knife struck him in the heart.

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Daddy Cool is a suave hit man, deadly with a throwing knife. He lives a content, comfortable family life on his takings – until his daughter shacks up with a pimp. Then he has to track her down and get her back. In great pulp fashion, the search for his daughter involves street hustling, beatings and murder. The story builds as the bodies piles up, but none of it quite prepared me for the dramatic ending when, on the last page of the book, pulp turned to Shakespearean tragedy.