Night Train to Sugar Hill

In the gritty backdrop of 1980s Los Angeles, the crack epidemic had taken a devastating toll. Innocent and damned alike fell prey to the artificial allure of the drug – a teenager accidentally overdosing, junkies smoking crack laced with cyanide, a gang member gunned down in the streets, a mother murdered by her alcoholic husband, and a major drug dealer killed by an ordinary man fed up with the drug trade.

Iceberg Slim's final novel, Night Train to Sugar Hill, set on L.A.'s meanest and toughest streets, had never been published until now. This work of political fiction is Slim's most personal, an epic tragedy where no one escapes the deadly orbit of the drug crisis and the police repression that follows.

Baptiste O'Leary, Slim's alter ego and an old ex-con, calls for political action against the militarized police raiding black communities, and greater compassion for those caught in the drug's web, including his own daughter Opal.

Iceberg Slim's novels have always been known for their uncompromising truth, and Night Train to Sugar Hill is no exception. In this hybrid novel, Slim looks back on his abusive childhood, his criminal career, and his later years as a family man, set against the backdrop of an America where the so-called dream has become a nightmare, and the underclass is deliberately preyed upon.

A mix of hardcore crime fiction, mysticism, L.A. noir, literary naturalism, and street literature, Night Train to Sugar Hill offers Slim's end-of-life vision, a powerful and unflinching portrayal of the devastating impact of the drug crisis and the systemic issues that perpetuate it.

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