Full Crew (Moss Side Massive 2)

Book excerpt: Released from prison bad boy Easy-Love Brown is out ready to reclaim Manchester’s gangster crown after wasting time doing time, time has brought him new enemies but as grandma says, “if you want to swim in the river, first you have to kill the crocodiles.” Seventeen-year-old Danny Boy Ranks leader of the Worlders Crew has a vile mouth and a temper to match and he doesn’t believe no man riding on his grind. Ranks’ ambition is to “out Easy’s light” while avoiding clashing with Yardie godmother, leader of the Dodge Crew, Miss Small who wants to be reunited with the son she abandoned as a baby and give up the hustle. Easy figures that if he can manipulate Miss Small, he can take over her crew because as grandma always says, strength comes in numbers.Realising that he too, has to increase numbers, it doesn’t take long for Danny to work out that ex-gang leader, Storm Michaels is hiding the truth from his brother Zukie who is suffering from memory loss after a car crash and doesn’t remember that Storm caused the death of his best friend in a payback gone wrong. Storm has given up the gun for good, no longer in a gang, but Danny believes that once a street soldier always a street soldier, blackmailing Storm to get him to eradicate Easy. Storm, Zukie, Ranks and Easy-Love, find they have unresolved issues and challenges from the past and present to face in the sequel to the best-selling novel, Moss Side Massive, from the UK’s first first black female crime writer. “Rolling along at a terrific lick, a highly original take on the American crime novel is as claustrophobic as Pelecanos (acclaims writer of The hit TV series ‘The Wire’) and as soapy/dysfunctional as Franzen” Times Literary Supplement “Karline Smith captures both atmosphere and a pervading feel of evil. She's undoubtedly a writer to watch...." - Reviewing the Evidence