Chester Himes

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksBest known for his hardboiled Harlem Detective series, Chester Himes was also a superb literary writer, beginning his creative life by writing short stories in the 1930s while serving jail time for armed robbery. Selected here are some of his best stories – from a satirical tale about a student bet that purportedly disproves the existence of racism in Los Angeles to a chilling drama in which a snake invades a family home.

From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a masterful autobiographical novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite it Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery. Terror and chaos reign in the prison, where corrupt, racist guards mete out capricious punishments like time in "the hole," where inmates' sense of reality slips away in total darkness. When a fire breaks out amid these mounting indignities, it unleashes a deadly mayhem that leaves Jimmy feeling as though his entire world is disintegrating. But in its aftermath, he kindles a tender relationship with a fellow convict named Rico and finally catches a glimmer of hope. Searing, exquisitely vivid, and ultimately affirming, Yesterday Will Make You Cry is a masterful autobiographical novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite them.

From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a powerful autobiographical novel about a black family tortured by colorism as it strives to live up to the myth of the Black middle class in white, post-war America Lillian Taylor has three sons, a comfortable house, and a well-liked husband who teaches at a local college. But her contempt for her family's dark complexion infects this bright world until it begins to come undone. As one troubling incident leads to another, her husband is pushed to an ever more precarious existence and her best-loved son, Charles, sinks into a life of vice in the perilous borderland between black and white society. With piercing insight and emotional depth, The Third Generation chronicles the unraveling of a black family plagued by the pernicious psychological effects of racism.

'A stark depiction of the “alligator pond” of prison life … Rage tempered with compassion … [its] emotional core continues to smoulder’ The New York Times Book ReviewThrill-seeking teenager Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery in the state penitentiary, where terror and chaos reign, corrupt guards inflict casual violence, and men try to preserve their dignity amid isolation and inhumanity. When a fire breaks out, setting hell and mayhem loose, it seems Jimmy’s entire world is unravelling. But as he develops a tender relationship with fellow convict Rico, hope begins to glimmer, and, through his eventual foray into writing, something resembling redemption. Originally published in 1952, in an expurgated version, as Cast the First Stone, Yesterday Will Make You Cry draws on Chester Himes’s own youthful experiences of imprisonment to face down the scouring truths of harm and love. ‘Himes at the top of his game … what an amazing book it is’ Melvin Van Peebles

Fast-paced and hard-boiled, this Harlem Detectives novel follows a pile of stolen money – or it would if anyone could find it… Alberta Wright drops dead on the street during a sermon by the charismatic con man Sweet Prophet. Her partner rushes home to avoid the cops, only to find her apartment looted by someone looking for her stash of cash. But soon it becomes apparent that there are number of players in the race for Alberta’s dough. Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones are called in to investigate, but they know full well the bodies haven’t stopped dropping yet.

A classic thriller from the Harlem Detective series, where love, jealousy and many-peopled mayhem aboundBig Joe Pullen is dead and his wake is getting boozy. When the opium-addicted Reverend Short falls out of a window trying to see a thief fleeing the robbed store opposite, his life is saved when he lands in a bread basket, cushioned by the corpse of Valentine Haines. It’s up to detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson to find out who stabbed Valentine – though no one at the wake is keen to say much to the police. Shot through with dry, dark humour, this is Chester Himes at his hardboiled noir best.

The searing debut novel by Chester Himes, ‘written with youthful panache and a bellyful of anger’ (Observer)Robert ‘Bob’ Jones – crew leader, shipyard worker, educated, employed – is finding life impossible. Though he’s recently been promoted to supervisor, he is disrespected and resented by white colleagues; and despite his relationship with the high-class Alice, he is crudely baited by the manipulative Madge. Over the course of four fraught days in Los Angeles, he is plagued with increasingly violent urges as the bigotry and cruelty he faces day-in-day-out become unbearable. Chester Himes’s shattering debut is a masterful reckoning with the poisonous effects of racism, and a monumental protest novel.‘A relentless, gripping, classic novel, one of the most powerful exposés of what it is like to be black in America’ LA Times

The final novel in the trailblazing Harlem Detective series, set in a New York City at boiling pointBawdy and tough-talking, wickedly funny and wantonly sensual, Blind Man With a Pistol is a surreal joyride through Harlem in a heatwave. Detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are side-tracked from investigating a series of organised race riots when a white man with a cut throat and no trousers falls dead at their feet. Told in a thrilling chaos of impressions over the course of one day and one night, this case will take Jones and Johnson into the pounding heart of Harlem.

From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a brilliant, short novel about a tragic death and a wrongful conviction Spare and powerful, A Case of Rape chronicles a tragic miscarriage of justice. Mrs. Elizabeth Hancock Brissard, a white woman, has died in Paris under mysterious circumstances. She had overdosed on an aphrodisiac, and there was evidence she had been sexually assaulted. A French couple witnessed four black men attempting to push her out a window before she died. The trial that followed was summary, and its verdict convicting the four men of rape was practically a foregone conclusion. But was it true? A riveting mystery but also a mordant critique of racism and sexism, and featuring an introduction by Calvin C. Hernton, A Case of Rape is the fablelike story of doomed love and justice.

In this knockout standalone crime novel from the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a white cop's murderous outburst leads to a pulse-pounding chase to silence a witness It's early morning in New York, a few days after Christmas and bitter cold. A white detective named Walker accuses the black workers at a luncheonette on 37th Street and Fifth Avenue of stealing his car. He's been drinking--a lot. By the time he corners Fat Sam in the refrigeration room, he's raving mad, and his .32-caliber revolver goes off. But who would believe it was an accident? Two other men work in the luncheonette, and in his fuming, psychotic state, Walker is determined to take out these witnesses. One of them, Luke, he kills in cold blood. But the other, Jimmy, gets away by the skin of his teeth. As Jimmy tries to stay one step ahead and desperately pleads with the authorities that the killer is on the force, Walker closes in until the chase culminates in an explosive conclusion.

Two lives spiral into a fatal pas de deux during a weekend of sex, alcohol and violence--from the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series Jesse Robinson and Kriss Cummings once shared a passionate weekend in Chicago, but it's been years since they've seen each other. Jesse, a black writer, refuses to pen the inspirational novel his agent wants, and sits in his Harlem tenement as his career plummets accordingly. Kriss, a white divorc e, has found moderate success at her office job, but is disillusioned with life. Often sleeping with black men, she's pilloried for "solving the Negro Problem in bed." Each of them lonely and embittered by the racial tensions of McCarthy-era America, they reunite for a whiskey-soaked weekend in 1952, spiraling into a violent, malicious pas de deux that is fated to end in destruction.

In this gripping installment of the maverick Harlem Detectives series, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones investigate a series of seemingly unrelated, brutal crimes. Bodies are dropping in the streets of Harlem, but in the bitter winter cold, they won't spoil. A witness sees a Cadillac that looks as though it's made of solid gold hurl an old woman to the street before peeling off. A shoot-out in front of a bar kills two and puts a politician in a coma. Not to mention that a whole lot of money has vanished into thin air. Now detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson have to squeeze the surprising truth out of sparse facts and get to the bottom of this explosive mystery. All Shot Up is an exhilarating ride through hard-boiled Harlem that only Chester Himes could have accomplished.

The final, posthumous installment of the ground-breaking Harlem Detectives series: a novel of explosive, apocalyptic violence, and a startling vision of the effects of racism in America Tomsson Black is a revolutionary planning to overthrow white society. Generation after generation of Tomsson's family have faced insidious, racist persecution, and Tomsson's own experience has been no exception. But he was born a fighter, and he's taking matters into his own hands with a final, cataclysmic act of vengeance. Around the time that acclaimed author Chester Himes died in 1984, it was rumored that another Harlem Detectives novel existed, one that remained unfinished. When the manuscript was found, edited, and published first in France, it was widely regarded as a masterwork. Completed from the author's notes by two editors, Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner, who also introduce this edition, Plan B is an excoriating statement about the deep, corrosive effects of racism and an apocalyptic vision of Black rebellion that thrusts Himes's cherished detectives directly into the fray.

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 IntroductionHere in one volume is an exceptional selection from Chester Himes's acclaimed Harlem Detectives series. Winner of France's prestigious Grand Prix de Litt rature Polici re 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

In this page-turning installment of the classic Harlem Detectives series, a woman dies at a con man's religious street revival, and her massive, secret pile of cash vanishes The charismatic con man Sweet Prophet is delivering an electrifying street sermon when Alberta Wright, a true believer who dreams of pies bursting with hundred-dollar bills, drops dead. Her partner rushes home only to find her apartment looted--and a stash of cash she was trying to keep a secret long gone. But that kind of money can't be kept secret. It isn't in the thief's hands long before he gets knocked off. And then the killer faces lethal competition of his own. As the missing pile of money changes hands, it leaves behind a string of cold-blooded murders that shows no sign of slowing down. Detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones must move fast to stop the killings in this gripping crime thriller from a master of the genre.

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.

'The new crime and espionage series from Penguin Classics makes for a mouth-watering prospect' Daily TelegraphA 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...

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

'The toughest crime stories in print' Sunday TimesThe night's over for Ulysses Galen. It started going bad for the big Greek when a knife was drawn, then there was an axe, then he was being chased and shot at. Now Galen is lying dead in the middle of a Harlem street. But the night's just beginning for detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. Because they have a smoking gun but it couldn't have killed Galen, and they had a suspect but a gang called the Real Cool Moslems took him. And as patrol cars and search teams descend on the neighbourhood, their case threatens to take a turn for the personal.The Real Cool Killers is loaded with grizzly comedy and with all the raucous, threatening energy of the streets it's set on.

'A bawdy, brazen rollercoaster of a novel . . . the wildest' The New York TimesA preacher called Deke O'Malley's been selling false hope: the promise of a glorious new life in Africa for just $1,000 a family. But when thieves with machine guns steal the proceeds - and send one man's brain matter flying - the con is up. Now Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed mean to bring the good people of Harlem back their $87,000, however many corpses they have to climb over to get it.Cotton Comes to Harlem is a non-stop ride, with violence, sex, double-crosses, and the two baddest detectives ever to wear a badge in Harlem.With an Introduction by Will Self