Way Past Cool, Mowry's 1992 work, tells of a gang of early adolescent males who resolve to kill a local drug dealer and thus slow the flow of drugs that are polluting their neighborhood. The drug dealer in Way Past Cool seems more successful and intelligent than Air Touch. Here the dealer has a bodyguard and rides in an automobile more suited to someone who may need to duck bullets than Air Touch's Viper. The demise of each drug dealer is violent, although Air Touch's end seems more pitiful—killed not by angry gangsters but by his white bosses for failing to keep them informed about the lost shipment of cocaine. The young adults in each novel have a gritty realism about them—Mowry exaggerates little about their virtues and their failings.

Jamaica is referred to by characters in Way Past Cool and...