Book Review: The Jones Men

CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2024

Book Review: 'The Jones Men' by Vern E. Smith

5 / 5 Stars

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to celebrate Black History Month by reading and reviewing a book (fiction or nonfiction) that describes the Black Experience. For February 2024, we are reviewing 'The Jones Men' by Vern E. Smith.

'The Jones Men' first was published in 1974. This Old School Books / W. W. Norton trade paperback edition (222 pp.) was issued in 1998.

Vern E. Smith was born in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1946. In 1971 he joined Newsweek  magazine as a reporter in the Detroit office, later serving as the bureau chief in Atlanta from 1979 to 2002. Although Smith has contributed pieces to nonfiction books (such as 'Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did To Us'), and written screenplays, 'The Jones Men' remains his only published crime novel.

'The Jones Men' is set in Detroit in the early 1970s. The two protagonists, Lenny Jack and Joe Redd, are youngbloods looking to make it big as drug dealers - 'jones men' - in the city underworld. Lenny Jack intends to get his heroin inventory in a particularly dangerous fashion: stealing it from Willie McDaniel, Detroit's drug kingpin.

While ripping off Willie McDaniel is something of a death wish, Lenny Jack is living with a fatalism born in the jungles of South Vietnam, where, as a soldier in the American Army, he recovered from a serious wound. As far as Lenny Jack is concerned, he has nothing to lose. Either his heist works, or it doesn't.

But while Lenny is a reckless man, he isn't a stupid man. He's willing to pay top dollar to hire a team of gunslingers to protect himself. And he's taking all manner of precautions to avoid alerting the Detroit criminal enterprise to his plans.

As snow falls on the mean streets of the city, Lenny Jack and Joe Redd are about to pull off a robbery that will bring chaos and violence to Detroit. The question is, will they live to enjoy the proceeds ?

'The Jones Men' is one of the best crime novels I've ever read.

The author uses a clean, clipped prose style that communicates a hardboiled sensibility. But it avoids the pitfall of getting so caught up in the hardboiled diction that the prose comes across as an unwitting self-parody.

The chapters are short and the plot unfolds with speed. There are subplots that contribute to the narrative without retarding it. The novel builds in a careful and deliberate way to a slam-bang climax of violence and mayhem, that leaves no plot threads dangling.

Author Smith fills the pages of 'The Jones Men' with descriptive passages communicating the street culture of the Detroit of the mid-1970s. These passages give the action an authentic sensibility. In your mind's eye, as you read the book, you can visualize the El Dorados and Fleetwoods cruising the ghetto streets under overcast skies, their drivers wearing the latest and greatest in Player fashion, listening to Marvin Gaye and Al Green on the dashboard tape deck.

Anyone who appreciates a well-written crime novel is going to want a copy of 'The Jones Men'.