The Trifling Times
of Nathan Jones
by Moses Miller

Reviewed by: Joey Pinkney

Moses Miller's debut effort Nan: The Trifling Times of Nathan Jones puts everyone talking bad about the Street Lit genre in check mate. This book is nothing short of remarkable. The Trifling Times of... provokes emotions of anxiety, sympathy and curiosity from the first word and keeps you hooked to the very last period. Set in Brooklyn, NY, during the Operation Falcon era of drug enforcement in the mid to late eighties, The Trifling Times of... gives the reader a behind the scene look underbelly of American Justice.

Nathan Jones is a complex man with a simple plan—survival. Little by little, everyone who Nathan loves is taken from him. His parents were killed as a result of a high-speed chase. A PCP junkie plowed over them with reckless rage after robbing and killing a liquor store owner and his wife. Nathan's mother pushed him to safety and his father came to her rescue just as the car crushed them.

Officer Mark Carson, the cop pursuing the murderous criminal, witnessed the vehicular homicide and takes Nathan under his wing. At the orphanage, Carson joins Nathan with Joseph Hayes—the son of the couple slain in the liquor store robbery that preceded the demise of Nathan's parents. A bond between blood brothers is forged, but their lives become anything but easy.

Carson introduces the boys to Master Thaddeus after they have problems with a teenage gang of 5 Percenters led by Shaborn. Master Thadeus is a master in the art of war and teaches Nathan and Joe how to defend and attack with precision. A couple of months later, Shaborn makes the mistake of stealing Joe's hat. Nathan demolishes Shaborn and gains the respect of all the boys in the orphanage.

Nathan becomes infatuated with Latoya, a girl at his high school. Latoya gives him the nickname "Nan", and it stays permanently with Nathan like a tattoo. Infatuation turns into love and the loss of their innocence. Then his first love and lover moves away without a trace after being raped by her step-father. Already bitter from the loss of his parents, Nan sinks deeper into mental darkness.

Carson gets into bad debt with a powerful loan shark named Sonny and finds himself on the losing end of one-hundred fifty thousand dollars with days to make good on his outstanding tab. The once flashy and proud Carson now crumbles under pressure, stealing money and drugs during routine police raids in an attempt to avoid paying his monetary obligation with his life.

Nan and Joe are even pawns in Carson's plan to stay alive. Given a duffel bag full of cocaine, the boys are instructed to drop it off with Sonny. Being told they are carrying paintings, curiosity leads to the chilling discovery. No sooner than they realize what they are really delivering, they are cornered by cops and forced to run. Nan risks his safety to allow Joe to escape.

Nan is caught, beaten and tortured. He is then forced to steal drugs from various drug dealers to keep Carson and Joe out of harm's way. Since they are his only link to humanity, Nan uses his training in martial arts to comply. The crooked cops resell the drugs and leaves Carson and Joe alone. Carson is nowhere to be found and Joe graduates high school and enters college for his new found skill—creative writing.

Once the drug laundering operation is in contention of being exposed, the group of crooked cops scramble to bring everything to a halt by killing all of the hood figures directly involved in their illegal enterprise. All but one—Nan dodges the manhunt leaving behind a bloody trail. The crooked cops kills everyone who could be a possible witness to their attempt to erase Nan. From the new love of his life and mother of his unborn child to old ladies to Joe, everyone is brutally slain by crooked cops and their deaths are attributed to Nan.

Little by little, Nan gets more information about who is really running this rogue operation and why. With his life on the line, he struggles to extinguish those who are dead set on extinguishing him. And from there the reader can fall in line with Nan...and expect the unexpected.

"The Trifling Times of..." reads more like a movie than a novel. The setting and time changes are cinematic. This can be attributed to Moses Miller's background in journalism. Flipping back and forth, the book seamlessly pieces together Nan's past and present preparing the reader for an intense climax. The reader gets to see Nan experience, directly and indirectly, the effects of how partial information can engender inaccurate perceptions. His life also provokes mixed emotions. Nan is an antihero of sorts that murders and steals so that the ones he loves can go unscathed by those who are truly crooked.

Moses Miller's tale of lost love and lurid leeway with the law may be considered a classic decades from now. It's books like this that should be brought to the table when people want to discuss the quality, or the lack thereof, of books published for readers of Street Lit. This is literature by its very definition: writings in prose or verse, especially writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest.

What did you like best about this book?

This book portrays the other side of the murderous streets than the one that the media gives us on a daily basis. The realism of the events that surround Nan's past and present sheds light on the corruption that can go unseen by those who are either out of the loop or want to turn a blind eye to the situation. Cops are supposed to be the good guys and the people they go after are supposed to be the criminal element. The Trifling Times of... shows how the opposite can be closer to reality.

This book goes hand in hand when police officers are killed off-duty and the details are sketchy or when some young black person is shot and killed in broad daylight with no witnesses except for the police officers who do the killing.

The Trifling Times of... makes some of the other Street Lit books look like studio gangsters in comparison. Moses Miller writes with relentless attention to details. This book has the same feel that Illmatic has.

I like the fact that this book is equal parts fast-paced thriller and retrospective pseudo-biography without losing its power. Moses Miller has a way of keeping the reader stuck to the pages whether Nan is running from the cops or from his turbulent past.

What did you dislike about this book?

I can't really pick out anything that I dislike about this enchanting novel. I actually enjoyed this book through and through. I have no qualms.

How can the author improve this book?

Moses Miller can only improve this book by writing another book that picks up the story of Nan where The Trifling Times of... left off.

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Pooh :

Posted 161 days ago

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Moses Miller during an event we had in the Hampton Roads, VA area called Afr'am. He is a very humble man and a bomb tale writer. I read TTONJ in a matter of a two day period and it was the bomb. I had to chance to inform Mr Miller how much I loved this book, I told him I thought I was caught up in a Touchstone/Lionsgate movie. Yes, Yes, and Yes that's how great the book is....Summer 2008 the sequel is due out. He already knows I am definitely waiting for that one.

Therone Shellman :

Posted 245 days ago

I'm not saying this b/c he's my friend. I'm saying this b/c it is what it is. This book was very good and the topic is very real and true to life. This review made me think of Richard Jeantys "The Most Dangerous Gang In America The NYPD"
Moses is a good writer and very humble with it as well. He does this not for the name, glitter or glamour. Before this book thing he was working for a newspaper. So he got love for this thing we do and is well educated when it comes to black lit
Great review for a good book and writer.

Rochelle :

Posted 249 days ago

I will be checking this book out. It looks good.

Last Real One :

Posted 249 days ago

Moses Miller is one of the top authors that seems to fall under the radar; his writing is crafty and descriptive. One of the best in the game, hands down!

Checkout, the joint he did with Feds Magazine as well.

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