Description

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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.

“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

A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Special Edition

About the Author

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CHESTER HIMES began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery from 1929 to 1936. From his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Himes dealt with the social and psychological repercussions of being black in a white-dominated society. Beginning in 1953, Himes moved to Europe, where he met and was strongly influenced by Richard Wright. It was in France that he began his best-known series of crime novels—including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965)—featuring two Harlem policemen. As with Himes's earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humor. He died in Spain in 1984.

Praise For…

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“Himes undertook to do for Harlem what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles.”
    —Newsweek

“One of the most important American writers of the 20th century. . . . A quirky American genius.”
    —Walter Mosley

“Himes wrote spectacularly successful entertainments, filled with gems of descriptive writing, plots that barely sidestep chaos, characters surreal, grotesque, comic, hip, Harlem recollected as a place that can make you laugh, cry, shudder.”
    —John Edgar Wideman
 
“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