The Essential Harlem Detectives

"Here in one volume is an exceptional selection from Chester Himes's acclaimed Harlem Detectives series. Winner of France's prestigious Grand Prix de Littâerature Policiáere 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."--

CHESTER HIMES began his writing career in 1932 while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery. In 1953, Himes moved to Europe, and it was in France that he began his popular series of crime novels featuring two Harlem policemen. In 1958, he won France's prestigious Grand Priz de Littérature Policère. He died in Spain in 1984.
S. A. COSBY is the award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of All the Sinners Bleed, Razorblade Tears, and Blacktop Wasteland, the last of which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was named a best book of the year by NPR, The Guardian, and Library Journal, among others.