Freddie Holmes could’ve written the book on how to be a player. With his good looks, gift of gab, his Jersey swag, and his ability to put it down in the bedroom, his only source of income is the women he manipulates. After meeting Simone, however, he is ready to hang up his womanizing gloves, or so he says.
Slug is a stick-up kid/hustler from the Dirty South. After losing his drug connect, he uses his trip to New Jersey for a funeral as an opportunity to link up with his cousin Freddie, in hopes of finding a new supplier. Freddie wants to show his cousin a good time, Jersey style, while he’s visiting, only he chooses the wrong place and the wrong time to do so. At the end of the night, two people are left in their own blood. One is the younger brother of a known drug dealer—the other is a cop.
Freddie is forced to make some quick decisions. To evade his situation, he takes his cousin up on his offer, relocates to North Carolina, and changes his profession, but not without his soon-to-be-wife Simone. She gives up everything to go on the run with her man, all in the name of love, and soon gets a dose of reality. She has no idea what she had signed up for until she takes a good look at her life with Freddie.
See how Freddie Holmes learns the hard way that you can run, but you can’t hide forever.
J. M. Benjamin won the African American Literary Award’s Best Street Novel of the Year Award in 2006 for Down in the Dirty. He is the author of My Manz and Em, and he has contributed to several anthologies: Menace II Society, Christmas N The Hood with Nikki Turner, and Hood Legends. He is from Plainfield, New Jersey.