The Essential Harlem Detectives

The Essential Harlem Detectives is a one-volume selection of four scintillating stories from the legendary Harlem Detectives series. This blistering, ground-breaking satire of Harlem's criminal underworld is penned by master crime-writer Chester Himes.

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. He is best known for the classic crime fiction series featuring detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones.

Himes wrote nine novels in the Harlem Detectives series. In these four popular, accomplished instalments, his cold, wise-cracking sleuths are thrust into a brutal, murderous world inhabited by conniving con men, gun-toting gangsters, and opium-smoking preachers. Himes's vision of Harlem's criminal underground, enriched by deft plotting and scintillating dialogue, offers both riotous entertainment and a penetrating enquiry into the fraught tensions of race in postwar America.