I wanted to like this more than I did.

The first, and among the best of the Shaft books. Tidyman weaves a very tight plot centred around his creation of John Shaft. Shaft is written as a tough, streetwise private eye who was brought up in the rough streets of Harlem. His decision to work as a private eye based in the "white" area of Manhattan is viewed by his black acquaintances as a betrayal. This is most notably protested by the character of Ben Buford, a militant with whom Shaft had grown up with in Harlem, but also by the gangster Knocks Persons who claims he approached Shaft because of his white connections.
The race issue is not the centre of the book, however, it is just a backdrop giving it a unique (at the time) flavour. The main drive of the book is the plot surrounding the kidnapping of Persons' daughter by the Mafia and how Shaft is used, by both the gangsters and the police, despite his cockiness and self-assurance. Shaft carries himself with such arrogance that he thinks no one will get the better of him. He thus gets himself into some pretty dangerous situations along the way and even gets a severe beating by mafia hit men.
That Shaft wins out in the end comes as no surprise and the reader is carried along with him through to the exciting finale. Along the way the book is liberally dosed with barbed dialogue and wisecracks. As such it follows the tradition of the hard-boiled detective books of Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane, albeit spiced up with heavier doses of sex and violence.
Other books in the series are:- Shaft Among the Jews, Shaft's Big Score!, Shaft Has a Ball, Good-bye Mr Shaft, Shaft's Carnival of Killers and the last Shaft. All are worth searching out for entertaining thick ear fiction. ( )