Download or read book The Essential Harlem Detectives written by Chester himes and published by . This book was released on 2024-01-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A friend and contemporary of Richard Wright and James Baldwin - and every bit their equal - Chester Himes was the acclaimed author of literary novels, stories and essays, as well as the classic crime fiction series for which he is best known, featuring detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. Himes wrote nine novels in the Harlem Detectives series, and in these four popular, accomplished instalments, his cold, wise-cracking sleuths are thrown into a brutal, murderous world peopled with conniving con men, gut-toting gangsters and opium-smoking preachers. Himes's vision of Harlem's criminal underground, enriched by deft plotting and scintillating dialogue, is both riotous entertainment and penetrating enquiry into the fraught tensions of race in postwar America.

Download or read book The Essential Harlem Detectives written by Chester Himes and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 786 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A one-volume selection of four novels in the legendary detective series—blistering, groundbreaking capers set in Harlem's criminal underworld—by master crime writer Chester Himes. With an introduction by New York Times bestselling author S.A. Cosby. “[Himes] put a spin on crime fiction—emphasizing urban atmosphere, street smarts, and uptown carryings-on—unlike anything the genre had previously seen.” —The Boston Globe “Himes’s Harlem saga vies with the novels of David Goodis and Jim Thompson as the inescapable achievement of postwar American crime fiction.” —The New York Times "His implacable drive to examine the Black experience, the disingenuous nature of the American Dream, the reality of pain and sorrow and what it does to the soul, that is what makes [Himes] the bard of the existential African American psyche." —S.A. Cosby, from his Introduction Here in one volume is an exceptional selection from Chester Himes's acclaimed Harlem Detectives series. Winner of France's prestigious Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and lauded by Jean Cocteau as a "prodigious masterpiece," A Rage in Harlem introduces detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson in a searing escapade. In The Real Cool Killers, the duo investigates a shooting and discovers an unsettling personal connection. In The Crazy Kill, a man is found in a breadbasket, stabbed to death, leaving Himes's detectives to find out who among the many suspects did it. And in Cotton Comes to Harlem, the brazen robbery of a notorious con man running a back-to-Africa scam sets off a hunt for a bale of Southern cotton. These masterful novels exhibit Himes's evocative, baroque descriptions of Black life in Harlem and his famously blistering social commentary. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times. "The best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler." —San Francisco Chronicle

Download or read book Cotton Comes to Harlem written by Chester Himes and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2011-08-03 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From “the best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler” (San Francisco Chronicle) comes a hard-hitting, entertaining entry in the trailblazing Harlem Detectives series about two NYPD detectives who must piece together the clues of the scam of a lifetime. Flim-flam man Deke O’Hara is no sooner out of Atlanta’s state penitentiary than he’s back on the streets working a big scam. As sponsor of the Back-to-Africa movement, he’s counting on a big Harlem rally to produce a massive collection—for his own private charity. But the take is hijacked by white gunmen and hidden in a bale of cotton that suddenly everyone wants to get his hands on. As NYPD detectives “Coffin Ed” Johnson and “Grave Digger” Jones face the complexity of the scheme, we are treated to Himes’s brand of hard-boiled crime fiction at its very best.

Download or read book The Essential Harlem Detectives written by Chester Himes and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A one-volume selection of four novels in the legendary detective series—blistering, groundbreaking capers set in Harlem's criminal underworld—by master crime writer Chester Himes. With an introduction by New York Times bestselling author S.A. Cosby. “[Himes] put a spin on crime fiction—emphasizing urban atmosphere, street smarts, and uptown carryings-on—unlike anything the genre had previously seen.” —The Boston Globe “Himes’s Harlem saga vies with the novels of David Goodis and Jim Thompson as the inescapable achievement of postwar American crime fiction.” —The New York Times "His implacable drive to examine the Black experience, the disingenuous nature of the American Dream, the reality of pain and sorrow and what it does to the soul, that is what makes [Himes] the bard of the existential African American psyche." —S.A. Cosby, from his Introduction Here in one volume is an exceptional selection from Chester Himes's acclaimed Harlem Detectives series. Winner of France's prestigious Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and lauded by Jean Cocteau as a "prodigious masterpiece," A Rage in Harlem introduces detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson in a searing escapade. In The Real Cool Killers, the duo investigates a shooting and discovers an unsettling personal connection. In The Crazy Kill, a man is found in a breadbasket, stabbed to death, leaving Himes's detectives to find out who among the many suspects did it. And in Cotton Comes to Harlem, the brazen robbery of a notorious con man running a back-to-Africa scam sets off a hunt for a bale of Southern cotton. These masterful novels exhibit Himes's evocative, baroque descriptions of Black life in Harlem and his famously blistering social commentary. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times. "The best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler." —San Francisco Chronicle

Download or read book The Crazy Kill written by Chester Himes and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From “one of the most important American writers of the 20th century” (Walter Mosley) comes a classic thriller in the trailblazing Harlem Detectives series, in which love and jealousy erupt into violence. One early morning, Reverend Short is watching from his bedroom window as the A&P across the street is robbed. As he tries to see the thief get away, the opium-addicted preacher leans too far and falls out--but he is unscathed, thanks to an enormous bread basket outside the bakery downstairs. As the crowd gathers to see what happened, a shocking discovery is made: There is another body in the bread basket, and Valentine Haines is dead, really dead. It's up to Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson to find out who murdered Val.

Download or read book Cotton Comes to Harlem written by Chester Himes and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-05-05 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The new crime and espionage series from Penguin Classics makes for a mouth-watering prospect' Daily Telegraph A con-man is swindling the poor folk of Harlem out of their life savings - and now all hell's broken loose. The 'Reverend' Deke O'Malley has just made $87,000 by duping his followers, only for white gunmen to hijack the rally and escape with the cash hidden inside a bale of cotton. Now ace detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson must get the good people of Harlem their money back by any means necessary, in a raucous, breakneck adventure involving double-crosses, exotic dancers, a racist colonel and a whole pile of bodies...

Download or read book A Rage in Harlem Special Edition written by Chester Himes and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A special edition of A Rage in Harlem, a ripping introduction to Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, who patrol New York City’s roughest streets in Chester Himes’s groundbreaking Harlem Detectives series. Featuring an introduction by James Ellroy. For love of fine, wily Imabelle, hapless Jackson surrenders his life savings to a con man who knows the secret of turning ten-dollar bills into hundreds—and then he steals from his boss, only to lose the stolen money at a craps table. Luckily for him, he can turn to his savvy twin brother, Goldy, who earns a living—disguised as a Sister of Mercy—by selling tickets to Heaven in Harlem. With Goldy on his side, Jackson is ready for payback. A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Special Edition

Download or read book The Heat s On written by Chester Himes and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones are in the hot seat in one of the most chaotic, brutally funny novels in the groundbreaking Harlem Detectives series. • "A rattlingly good action melodrama spiced with a maximum of humor and a minimum of self-consciousness." —The New York Times From the start, nothing goes right for Coffin Ed and Grave Digger. They are disciplined for use of excessive force. Grave Digger is shot and his death announced in a hoax radio bulletin. Bodies pile up faster than Coffin Ed and Grave Digger can run. Yet, try as they might, they always seem to be one hot step behind the cause of all the mayhem—three million dollars’ worth of heroin and a giant albino called Pinky.

Download or read book Two Guns from Harlem written by Robert E. Skinner and published by Popular Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the many writers who lent their talents to the creation of hard-boiled detective fiction, few have approached it from a more original perspective than Chester Himes. A former criminal himself, Himes brought to the writing of detective fiction the perspective of the black man. Himes made his debut with the brilliant For Love of Imabelle, for which he was awarded the coveted Grand Prix de la Littérature Policière. Two Guns from Harlem probes Himes's early life and career for the roots of this series and for its heroes, Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. Skinner discusses how Himes's experience as a black man, combined with his unique outlook on sociology, politics, violence, sex, and race relations, resulted not only in an unusual portrait of black America but also opened the way for the creation of the ethnic and female hard-boiled detectives who followed.

Download or read book Harlem Shuffle written by Colson Whitehead and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is “fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny ... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel" (San Francisco Chronicle). "Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either. Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the "Waldorf of Harlem"—and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes. Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs? Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto!

Download or read book A Rage in Harlem written by Chester Himes and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 1989-12-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ripping introduction to Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, patrolling New York City’s roughest streets in Chester Himes’s groundbreaking Harlem Detectives series. For the love of fine, wily Imabelle, hapless Jackson surrenders his life savings to a con man who knows the secret of turning ten-dollar bills into hundreds—and then he steals from his boss, only to lose the stolen money at a craps table. Luckily for him, he can turn to his savvy twin brother, Goldy, who earns a living—disguised as a Sister of Mercy—by selling tickets to Heaven in Harlem. With Goldy on his side, Jackson is ready for payback.

Download or read book Detectives in the Shadows written by Susanna Lee and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For anyone interested in crime fiction and television, or for those wanting to understand America's idolization of the good guy with a gun, Detectives in the Shadows is essential reading.

Download or read book The Harlem Cycle written by Chester B. Himes and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third omnibus edition from the Harlem Cycle sees three more novels featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. The novels include: Cotton Comes to Harlem, Blind Man with a Pistol and Plan B. Chester Himes is the author of A Rage in Harlem and The Real Cool Killers.

Download or read book Blind Man with a Pistol written by Chester Himes and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At once grotesquely comic and unflinchingly violent: the final entry in the trailblazing Harlem Detectives series, set in New York in the sweltering summer heat. “A sensual, surreal, cartoonishly violent and breathtakingly bawdy comic universe.” —Los Angeles Times New York is sweltering in the summer heat, and Harlem is close to the boiling point. To Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, at times it seems as if the whole world has gone mad. Trying, as always, to keep some kind of peace—their legendary nickel-plated Colts very much in evidence—Coffin Ed and Grave Digger find themselves pursuing two completely different cases through a maze of knifings, beatings, and riots that threaten to tear Harlem apart.

Download or read book A Rage in Harlem written by Chester B. Himes and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 1957 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jackson, trusting and besotted with his girlfriend, Imabelle, scrapes his hard-earned savings together in a scheme to triple his money. But it all goes terribly wrong, and Jackson soon finds himself without money, a job, or his beloved Imabelle. Desperate to find her, he turns to his brother for help. Featuring the hardboiled Harlem detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, A Rage in Harlem has swagger, brutal humour, lurid violence, a hearse loaded with gold and a conman dressed as a Sister of Mercy. The Green Popular Penguins Story It was in 1935 when Allen Lane stood on a British railway platform looking for something good to read on his journey. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor quality paperbacks. Lane's disappointment at the range of books available led him to found a company - and change the world. In 1935 the Penguin was born, but it took until the late 1940s for the Crime and Mystery series to emerge. The genre thrived in the post-war austerity of the 1940s, and reached heights of popularity by the 1960s. Suspense, compelling plots and captivating characters ensure that once again you need look no further than the Penguin logo for the scene of the perfect crime.

Download or read book The Real Cool Killers written by Chester Himes and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that Walter Kirn said was like “Hieronymus Bosch meets Miles Davis" (The New York Times). • Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones get personally involved in a gang dispute in one of the most provocative cases in Chester Himes’s groundbreaking Harlem Detectives series. Many people had reasons for killing Ulysses Galen, a big Greek with too much money and too great a liking for young black girls. But there are complications—like Sonny, found standing over the body, high on hash, with a gun in his hand that fires only blanks; a gang called the Moslems; a disappearing suspect; and the fact that Coffin Ed’s daughter is up to her pretty little neck in the whole explosive business.

Download or read book All Shot Up written by Chester Himes and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this gripping installment of the maverick Harlem Detectives series, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones investigate a series of seemingly unrelated, brutal crimes. A gold Cadillac, about as large as an ocean liner, rocks a woman to the pavement in the cold streets of Harlem. Three goons in cop uniforms heist a small fortune and leave an important politician dead. All told eight bodies stack up over the long, bloody weekend, but they won't spoil in this weather. And Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson have to follow the trail of brutal violence, perversion, and cold murder—and avoid getting caught in the fray.