Cotton Comes to Harlem

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Description

Scams, heists and murders abound in a high-energy caper from one of the great Black American crime writers, now part of a new crime series in Penguin Modern Classics A 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 to the morgue - 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.

Reviews

The greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler. * Sunday Times *
A bawdy, brazen rollercoaster of a novel . . . the wildest. * New York Times Book Review *
Chester Himes is one of the towering figures of the black literary tradition. His command of nuances of character and dynamics of plot is preeminent among writers of crime fiction. He is a master craftsman. -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
A fantasia with a hard brilliant core. * Evening Standard *
A fine crime writer ... in a vein of sheer toughness very much his own. * The Times *

Author Bio

Chester Himes was arrested for armed robbery in 1928, aged 19, and sentenced to 25 years in jail. In jail he began to write short stories, some of which were published in Esquire magazine. Upon release he took a variety of jobs, from working in a California shipyard to journalism to script-writing, while continuing to write fiction. He later moved to Paris where he was commissioned to write the first of his Harlem detective novels, A Rage in Harlem, which won the 1957 Grand Prix du Roman Policier. In 1969 Himes moved to Spain, where he died in 1984.