Original Gangster

Criminals are not born in a vacuum, and Frank Lucas is no exception. At the age of six he watched his cousin die in a lynching and in that moment of Southern brutality, Frank Lucas, notorious gangster, billion-dollar-heroin importer and true-life inspiration for the film American Gangster was born.

Original Gangster is the story of the most notorious black gangster to ever rule the streets of New York. From running numbers in the 50s, to importing millions of dollars of heroin in the 70s, to losing it all at the hands of a snitch, Lucas' story is the ultimate tale of ambition, hubris and downfall. Lucas story has gone down in history - he is notorious for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in Southeast Asia, and smuggling it back in the coffins of dead US servicemen.

Seven years of Lucas' life were dramatised for the recent film American Gangster, but this is the first time that the mythic figure depicted in the film tells the story himself. The book delves further into the story of Lucas and shows just what a folk hero he is to contemporary urban audiences. Told in the first person to acclaimed journalist TK, Original Gangster is a brutally honest account of a gangster and his times.

Lucas' story is a modern fable, and Lucas a mythical figure within it.