Judges’ Comments
Clyde ‘the Viper’ Morton travelled to Harlem to become a musician. Instead he became a lynchpin in the marijuana trade that fuelled the musicians. Now, thirty years later, he is dealing with the rise of heroine, the collapse of the moral code by which he operated, and a series of murders which have caught up with him. In flashbacks, Lamar shows us the tangled weave of Viper’s life; and follows a set of decisions that lead to unexpected places. Skillfully plotted, elegantly spare prose and a pungent sense of the jazz age.