Crime Partners by Donald Goines

Originally printed in 1974 by Holloway House under the pseudonym Al C. Clark.

Donald Goines (1936-1974) had a tumultuous life to say the least. Though he grew up in a middle-class family in north central Detroit in the 40s, he dropped out of school in the ninth grade at the age of fifteen, got a fake birth certificate and joined the Air Force during the Korean war. It was during his time in Korea that he discovered heroin. He returned to Detroit and became a pimp and a drug dealer. He was in and out of prison for armed robbery and bootlegging whiskey. While incarcerated he became interested in writing. At first, he tried his hand at westerns, having loved watching the movies on TV when he was a kid. He came upon a novel called Trick Baby by Chicago pimp/author, Iceberg Slim and was inspired to ditch the westerns and write about the world he knew. He cranked out sixteen books in four years. Eight of them in 1974. He would shoot heroin and blast out the stories like Stephen King coked out on Christine always needing that paycheck to pay for his next fix.

Goines was murdered along with his girlfriend in their apartment on Oct 21st 1974. Both were shot five times by two unidentified white men while their two toddler children watched. To this day it is still unsolved. There has been speculation that Goines, who often included real people from the street in his books, possibly rubbed someone the wrong way. It could have also been money owed for drugs. Maybe it was a robbery gone bad? Ironically, the beginning of the book in this review, Crime Partners starts off in a similar way.

Crime Partners is the first in a four-part series featuring Kenyatta who is the leader of a black militant group.

Crime Partners 1974

Death List 1974

Kenyatta’s Escape 1974

Kenyatta’s Last Hit 1975 (finished just before his death and published posthumously)

Kenyatta is named after Jomo Kenyatta who was the Prime Minister of Kenya from 63 to 64 and then became Kenya’s first president from 64 to 78. He was an African Nationalist and led the Kenya African National Union which helped separate Kenya from a colony of the British Empire into an independent republic.

The basic premise: Two hitmen team up with a black militant extremist group to take out cops and drug dealers from their neighborhood in 1970s Detroit.

The titular crime partners are Billy and Jackie. They have been recently released from prison and need some quick cash, so they decide to rob a junkie. Which, yeah, junkies are the last people with money, so it was an odd choice, but it did give the story a situation (no spoiler) to add a dimension to them to show that they aren’t just ruthless killers, they do have heart. Heads up, it will definitely make you think twice about continuing to read. It’s some brutal shit.

We are introduced to a black and white homicide team of Benson and Ryan. While investigating the junkies murder, Benson is walking around to the back of the building when a white cop tells him to freeze. Apparently, he’s never seen Benson before. He calls him racial slurs. Benson keeps his cool. He doesn’t feel the need to explain to this subordinate officer that he is not only a cop but a homicide detective. Benson’s white partner, Ryan comes running up and only then does the cop take his gun off Benson.

It's interesting that Goines used the scenario where the officer points the gun at Detective Benson to show the racial prejudice. It hits harder than if he had written a more street scenario. Like even being a cop won’t stop the hate. It’s powerful. And to add to the complexity, Ryan the white partner of Benson, is absolutely livid about the racist attitudes towards his partner. In this scene Goines shows two sides of the blue coin which I thought was fair. If this were written today it would have been heavy handed either for or against with no shades of grey.

The perspective switches back to Billy and Jackie. They need new guns. They have a connection named Kenyatta. But Kenyatta explains to them that he’s not an arms dealer and every time he sells guns to them, it’s less guns for his people. We then learn that Kenyatta is the leader of a radical black militant group whose plan is to clean up the streets of Detroit in the black neighborhoods by removing the prostitutes, drug dealers and racist cops. Kenyatta appreciates the reputation Billy and Jackie have as stone-cold killers and enlists them for a mission. The mission? He plans to erase from existence a racist cop (the one who pointed a gun at Benson). The fellas are all in.

From then on, we see the world and ideals of Kenyatta through the eyes of Billy and Jackie. They are shown love and respect and are treated like family. They meet some lovely ladies for some actual touching moments. And they murder more people. Though they don’t take out anybody who you’re going to cry over. Once again, in real life, a little too far. In novelization, just what the doctor ordered.

If this was written scholarly instead of from the street it would be considered “literature.” Though I have read where Goines is taught in some college courses. It is less a straightforward plot and more of a snippet of the landscape of urban Detroit in the 70s. The plot is there but it’s the characters that matter. And what makes me lean towards that literature moniker is that the message is open to interpretation. Nothing is spoon fed to you here. There is no clear cut, good guys versus bad guys. In Goines world it’s all shades of bad. In fact, I wonder if Goines even had a clear-cut agenda other than to give a behind the curtain view of this world.

As far as the writing goes, yeah, it’s a little amateurish, especially in the phrasing of the dialogue (not the slang- that’s perfect), but it’s overshadowed by the overall atmosphere. Also, the detective characters storyline gradually disappears. It was almost like he set out to make a police investigation novel and decided the Kenyatta plotline was more interesting, so he went that way.

I love the moral ambiguity of this.

This book is not for the faint of heart. No one was writing stuff like this. Goines was a trailblazer. On a shelf of gritty hardboiled fiction books his standout as the bleakest and unfortunately the most realistic. But he also adds a layer of heart and remorse, kinship and honor. This is must read material for anyone interested in the crime fiction genre.