The Importance of Being Dangerous

By David Dante Troutt

Book Overview

In the 1990s, as the Internet boomed and investments soared to unthinkable heights, many people were left with their feet planted firmly on the ground, looking enviously up at the more fortunate winners in life's game of roulette. This is the era in which we meet Sidarra, Griff, and Yakoob--hardworking folks who can't seem to get a toehold while wealth explodes around them. Each has personal struggles, but when they join the Central Harlem Investment Club, a plan to restore a little justice to their lives takes shape.

It seems Yakoob has found a way to siphon off funds from wealthy individuals--the kind of people who are well insured and will probably barely notice the missing money. But in order to justify personal gain at others' expense, the group decides to pick their victims based on people who have done harm to the black community in the past. A plan hatched in a dark pool hall could be a way to escape their drab lives and bring some equality back to the world.

But when the group takes in Yakoob's shady neighbor Raul, their scheme takes a sinister twist. Now, with murder in the mix, and the possibility of serious consequences, their best-laid plans may spiral into much more dangerous territory. . . .

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060789301
• ISBN13: 9780060789305
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

strong sharp exposé of not making it in America

In the early 1990s, thirty something single mom Sidarra detests how the "Board of Miseducation" promotes unqualified white coworkers while ignoring her much more skillful efforts. Public Defender Griff Coleman is bone marrow tired of defending the pathetic poor in a system that simply wants to lock away his mostly black clients; however worse is the attitude of his investment banker spouse Belinda, who acts superior to him in every possible way. Computer Programmer and wannabe comedian Yakoob Jones wants to make it in a white-only power structure that prefers he quietly do his menial chores hidden in a basement. The three of them learn of the Cicero Dean Investment Club, whose vision is to offer opportunities for humiliated middle class blacks to make money like the whites do via capital investment as a group. The three disillusioned Harlem residents invest in the company. However, they learn the truth about their investment club when drug dealer Raul joins as the Club's pyramid scheme of laundered money, stolen assets such as credit-card fraud and identity theft, and dummy corporations collapses leaving the trio feeling even more disheartened and disenfranchised. This is an interesting look at middle class ambitions blacks who want to make it, but feels the system rejects their efforts by de facto selecting less qualified whites. When the story line swings into romance (between Sidarra and Griff), it loses much of the stinging momentum as the plot stops exposing the hypocrisy of racial prerequisite only at the higher levels of the economy in spite of decades of EEO. Still this is a strong sharp exposé of not making it in America. Harriet Klausner