Iceberg Slim 
Death Wish 12 November 1997 Long White Con 01 May 1997 Airtight Willie and Me 01 May 1997 About the Author Bibliography Iceberg Slim
Death Wish 12 November 1997
Long White Con 01 May 1997
Airtight Willie and Me 01 May 1997
About the Author
Bibliography
Death Wish
Iceberg Slim's last published novel is perhaps his greatest.
Death Wish, written in Slim's typically hard-hitting and highly compulsive prose, tells
the story of Chicago's Mafia and the power struggle that ensues when the greedy Don, Jimmy
Collucci, attempts to become the king-pin of Chicago's "Honoured Society". Not
only is this a portrayal of an organisation whose working details Slim knew intimately but
we also see Mafia infighting set against a backdrop of the underworld in its entirety.
For Jimmy Collucci has had a lifelong hatred of dedicated
Black Warrior, Jessie Taylor, against whom he has regularly competed for turf on the
streets of Chicago. And Jessie Taylor has managed to get himself in a position from which
he is confident that he can take on Collucci and his ruthless outfit.
The result is bloody and riveting. Another masterpiece form
the man whose prose has redefined post-war American literature and who remains one of the
most startlingly original and hard-boiled writers America has produced.
"Slim belongs to the knuckleduster-in-your-face
school of storytelling." The Sunday Times
"Too often this major cultural icon for our times has
been criminally ignored. Iceberg Slim is a major creative influence on so many rnusicians
and writers working outside the bland mainstream, both in his native America and here in
the U.K. Slim always told it as it was, without compromise." Irvine Welsh
Long White Con
In Iceberg Slim's first novel, Trick Baby, he told the
unforgettable tale of the rise of White Folks, a white Negro who uses his colour as his
trump card in the tough game of The Con. Blue-eyed, light-haired and fair-skinned, White
Folks was to become the most incredible con man the ghetto ever spawned.
Long White Con takes up where Trick Baby left off. After the
death of his partner and mentor; Blue Howard, White Folks moves up to Canada where he
hooks up with the Vicksburg Kid, who completes his con education. Together they form a
formidable duo, playing for the highest stakes, pulling off the most ambitious con of the
lot - The Unhappy Virgin Game. Fleecing wealthy fools who think they are being sharp is
the art of the Con. But when the sums involved get to the levels seen in Long White Con,
the consequences of any slip can be fatal.
Like all of Iceberg Slim's work, Long White Con takes the
reader into a world rarely seen in print, combining wicked humour with streetwise
knowledge and philosophy. The result is another page-turning classic of hard-boiled
fiction.
Airtight
Willie and Me
also includes To Steal a Superfox • Lonely Suite •
Satin • Grandma Randy • The Reckoning
Airtight Willie & Me is a collection of six tales from the
underground, all of them characterised by Iceberg Slim’s distinctive and
unforgettable prose. The uncompromising, Chicago-raised, former pimp has been blowing away
readers for almost thirty years now but only recently in Britain has his work been
published. Airtight Willie & Me gives further evidence of why the Man’s work has
come to be widely regarded as the epitome of street fiction. From the opening title story,
where Slim gets ripped off by Airtight Willie, one of New York’s slickest con men, to
Satin, a classic tale of revenge in which the heist goes badly wrong, the reader is hooked
into a rollercoaster ride through the badlands of urban America. Compelling always, funny
sometimes, and typically bleak in their endings, Slim’s slices of city life are
important social documents that scorch most contemporary fiction into submission. There is
no moralising bullshit, no romanticised illusions, few redeeming factors - just
straight-up sawn-off shotgun blasts from the pen of the “King of the Ghetto”
(The Observer)
'Iceberg Slim always kept it real. So he will always
be relevant.' Ice T
'Iceberg Slim is a major creative influence on so
many musicians and writers working outside the bland mainstream.' Irvine Welsh
About The
Author
Robert Beck, aka Iceberg Slim, is the best known pimp of all
time. Born in 1918, he grew up in the mean streets of Southside Chicago where he became
involved in the underworld that was to shape his life. He eventually left the pimping game
after his third stretch in jail and began to write. He published five novels, one
collection of essays and most famously his autobiography, Pimp. All seven have been
best-sellers in the States where sales of his work currently stand in excess of 12
million. He died in 1992 at the age of 73 Iceberg Slim offered some of the rawest and
bleakest visions of urban America ever put to paper. His refusal to compromise, his stark
reflection of society's underbelly and his page-turning, darkly comic, highly disturbed
take on reality rapidly won him a major following and he continues to attract a very wide
readership. His work has come to be regarded as the epitome of street fiction.
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