Date Published: 01-19-2016
Torin Adeyemi is a quiet janitor at a Baltimore high school. But when the sun goes down, he becomes Jackboi, a ruthless vigilante with a knife and a mission. Haunted by a violent past in Haiti and burdened by the broken city around him, Torin has only one rule: punish the wicked and protect the innocent.
Each night, he walks the streets, cleaning up what the system ignores. Pimps, abusers, dealers, corrupt cops. They all bleed the same. And when justice fails, Jackboi delivers his own.
Jack$ Boi is a gritty urban thriller that blends psychological depth with raw street energy. It is part street lit, part crime fiction, and part emotional reckoning. This is not just a hood tale. It is a story about trauma, vengeance, and survival in a city that never sleeps and never forgives.
Perfect for fans of:
This book delivers:
"A gritty, realistic look at the streets. King doesn't just tell a story, he puts you in the thick of it. The character development for Jack$Boi is outstanding—a true antihero you can't stop watching." — Urban Fiction Review
"The pacing is relentless; I finished this in a single sitting. The suspense builds perfectly, culminating in an explosive finale. Fans of serious, authentic urban terror fiction will find their next addiction here." — Goodreads Reviewer
"Darrell A. King has mastered the art of suspense in the setting of inner-city life. It's violent, complex, and emotionally charged. Absolutely five stars for its unflinching honesty." — Online Book Club
Interview with Darrell King
What is your favorite part of the book?
See, for me, the most powerful part of Jackboi isn't one specific action, but the whole duality of the main character, "Jungle." We're talking about a slender Haitian immigrant, pushing a mop during the day, just another face getting by. But when that sun goes down on East Baltimore, he puts on that ski mask and becomes "Jungle"—the predator, the menace who strikes fear into the hearts of even the toughest guys on the street.
My favorite part is really that transformation, that complete shedding of his daytime anonymity. It shows the raw, brutal reality of survival in the streets, how a person can be driven by a relentless hunger for wealth and turn into a calculating stickup kid with robbery, violence, and murder at his disposal. That switch, from the quiet janitor to the silent hunter in the dark sedan, that's the core of the urban terror I wanted to capture. It's the authentic, dark heartbeat of the 'hood I draw from, straight out of the tradition of writers like Goines and Iceberg Slim. You can't look away from that kind of raw truth.
Does your book have a lesson? Moral?
The short answer is yes, but it ain't the Sunday school lesson you're looking for.
Street lit, or urban fiction, doesn't offer a traditional "moral" in the way a fable does. I'm not here to tell you to be a good boy or girl. What I'm doing in Jackboi is holding up a mirror to the reality of the streets—raw, unfiltered, and with the volume turned all the way up.
Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
Man, that’s a real question right there, because the truth is always a mix.
None of the characters in "Jackboi" are a one-for-one copy of any single person I know, but every single one of them is built on the reality of the streets. You can’t write this kind of story if you don't ground it in truth.
Jungle, the main character, is the perfect example. He’s an amalgamation. He's got the quiet demeanor I've seen in certain guys who work a legitimate job by day, but he's also got that ruthless drive and cold survival instinct of the predators I watched growing up. That feeling, the atmosphere of East Baltimore and the desperation for wealth—that is all authentic, taken from the environment I know and the stories that inspired me, like those of Donald Goines.
My imagination's job is to take those real, fragmented observations and build a complete, cohesive, and thrilling story around them. I invent the specific plot points and the dialogue, but the core motivations and the consequences they face? That's just the truth of street life. I just packaged it for the page.
Of all the characters you have created, which is your favorite and why?
That's an easy one, hands down it has to be Torin Adeyemi, better known to the streets and the readers as "Jungle".
There's something incredibly compelling, and frankly, disturbing, about the level of moral ambiguity he embodies. He’s the vigilante serial killer in Jackboi: A Tale of Urban Terror, operating out of this deeply fractured sense of justice. He’s not a hero, not by any conventional metric, but in the bleak, broken landscape of the novel's urban setting, he feels necessary. Torin started as an exploration: What happens when a profound sense of loss and powerlessness meets a specific set of skills and an unbreakable will? He doesn't just kill; he curates his violence. Each of his actions is a twisted commentary on the system’s failure to protect the marginalized in the city. He’s the monster created by the environment he now seeks to cleanse. That duality—the refined, intellectual man, Torin Adeyemi, versus the brutal, ritualistic killer, "Jungle"—is a thrilling high-wire act to write. Unlike a traditional hero or even a straightforward villain, Torin operates by a code that’s intensely personal and fiercely held, yet utterly unpredictable to an outsider. It allows for unexpected twists and turns in the narrative. You might find yourself reluctantly rooting for him in one chapter when he takes down a truly vile antagonist, and then recoil in the next when his rage turns towards someone slightly less deserving of his brand of 'justice.' It's that constant push and pull, the gray area he lives in, that keeps his story from becoming black and white, and that, for me, is the true heart of authentic urban terror. He's the character who always forces the narrative to a dangerous, uncompromising place.
What character in your book are you least likely to get along with?
The characters I’d least likely get along with, hands down, has to be any one of the "Dogcatchers"—the dirty cops from the original Jackboi: A Tale of Urban Terror. They represent a specific kind of betrayal that I find absolutely detestable. They aren't just bad guys; they're the people who have taken an oath to protect the very community they prey upon. The "Dogcatchers" aren't motivated by some grand, tragic philosophy like Torin Adeyemi "Jungle" (who, despite his brutality, is driven by a warped sense of justice). No, they’re driven by simple greed, petty sadism, and a corrosive sense of entitlement. They use the uniform and the law as a shield to brutalize the marginalized, shake down the powerless, and profit off the city's misery.
In writing them, I had to tap into a very cold place. I wanted them to feel utterly human in their venality, not like mustache-twirling villains, but like men who have simply allowed the power they wield to rot their souls. They are the systemic oppression made flesh.
I can write a character like "Jungle"—a killer—and understand his broken reasoning. But I can't reconcile myself with the calculated, institutional cruelty of the "Dogcatchers." They are the kind of people who make the work of genuine, honest cops infinitely harder, and they're the ones who give monsters like "Jungle" their terrifying, tragic justification. I have zero patience or sympathy for what they represent. They are, quite simply, the worst.
What would the main character in your book have to say about you?
You know what, Torin "Jungle" Adeyemi would probably call me a voyeur and a hypocrite. He'd look me dead in the eye and say, "You, Darrell King, are a coward. You spend your days sitting comfortably, drinking herbal tea, dreaming up the filth and violence you force me to live through. You write about the necessity of my brutal work, but you've never had to dirty your hands with anything more than a misspelled word on your laptop."
He'd appreciate the accuracy of the urban decay and the broken system I depict, but he'd despise my soft approach to his actions. If I tried to inject any "feelings" or a sense of redemption into his storyline, he'd be livid.
His final word? "You profit off my pathology. You create the monster, then expect it to pose nicely for your book cover. Just stick to detailing the kills, King, and stay out of my way."
Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
That's a fantastic question, and for me, the answer is both. I'm not interested in forcing my work into one box or the other; I want the terror to feel both immediate and expansive. First and foremost, every novel, especially with a title like Jackboi: A Tale of Urban Terror, has to be a solid, self-contained narrative. When a reader picks up one of my books, I want them to be sucked into that specific story—the tension, the character arcs, and the conclusion need to be fully satisfying. You should be able to grab any book in the series and not feel lost or like you're missing half the story. The immediate threat should be resolved, and the characters, whether they live or die, should complete their journey within those pages.
About the Author
Darrell King Sr. has been writing ever since the age of eight. His first published work of fiction was penned during the fall of 1976 as a student of Mary Field's Elementary School on South Carolina's Daufuskie Island. This effort was an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Hobbit," that he also wrote and illustrated. It was published in the school's quarterly periodical, "The Daufuskie Kid's Magazine." Darrell King has written stories and numerous poems, several of which were published in the 1995-1996 "Poetry Anthology" by the National Library of Poetry in Owings Mills, Maryland. During the 90s, Darrell King became inspired by and attracted to the lurid tales of inner city crime. Dramas he read in novels by great writers such as Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim captivated his attention. These tales prompted Mr. King to begin his literary career writing his very own stories of urban crime and inner city drama. Darrell King is the author of Mack Daddy: Legacy of a Gangsta, Dirty South ( Triple Crown) and How Do You Want It?(Urban Books) Mo' Dirty : Still Stuntin' (Urban Books) is his latest release and the much anticipated sequel to Dirty South. Darrell King was raised in South Carolina's Dufuskie Island. He now resides in Atlanta with his wife Sandy.
