Jul 2, 2007 3 min read

To what lengths would you go to keep your word? Even if it was illegal, dangerous, or immoral, would you do everything you could to keep a promise? Or would you retreat when the going gets rough?

Shareef Crawford made a lot of promises to a lot of people, and in the new novel “The Last Street Novel” by Omar Tyree, Shareef has also broken a lot of those promises. Now will he live long enough to keep one?

Everywhere Shareef Crawford looks, he sees his own face staring back at him from the back of his latest novel, which seems to be in the hands of every woman around. Shareef is a mega-bestselling romance author, and even though he has a wife and kids back in Florida, he’s used to female fans throwing themselves at him.

So used to it, in fact, that when a beautiful woman flirts with him at a booksigning, Shareef takes her back to his hotel. In the morning, she has a challenge for him: former Harlem drug dealer Michael Springfield wants to meet with Shareef “up north” at the prison in which Springfield is serving life. Springfield wants his life in and out of the pen immortalized by the author’s pen.

Word quickly hits the streets that Shareef’s in Harlem to research his next book and that he talked to Springfield, but Springfield has enemies “on the outside” and they don’t want to see his story in print. Shareef’s friends warn him to leave Harlem. For him, the streets are no longer safe.

But everybody knows Shareef Crawford is hardheaded and nobody’s ever accused him of being weak. He made a promise to himself to write a “real” story, and he’s going to do it. Besides, he’s intrigued by Baby G, a flashy young street general who says he wants to protect Shareef for a piece of fame in return. Can Baby G be trusted, when everyone else seems to want Shareef dead?

Author Omar Tyree never ceases to amaze me. Seriously, the guy is a literary chameleon. “The Last Street Novel” is almost nothing like Tyree’s last two novels. The good news is, it’s better.

From the first slam-you-in-your-chair chapter to the last few can’t-turn-them-fast-enough pages, “The Last Street Novel” is gritty, sweaty, and hard-hitting. Tyree populates this thriller with an abundance of figures, any one of which could be the one who’s stalking his lead character. The plot twists are tight – although ever-so-slightly predictable – and the subplots give you a nice window into Shareef’s character and what drives him to do what he does. This is one of those books you will have to force yourself to stick a bookmark in, because you won’t want to stop reading til you get to an ending that practically begs for a sequel.

If you’ve promised yourself that you’re going to read one book this summer, don’t look any further. Just go to your bookstore or library. “The Last Street Novel” should be the first book you grab when you get there.