Cotton Comes to Harlem

Description

'He belongs with those great demented realists ... whose writing pitilessly exposes the ridiculousness of the human condition' Will Self 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.

Chester Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1909 and grew up in Cleveland. Aged 19 he was arrested for armed robbery 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.

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 * 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 * 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. 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. A fantasia with a hard brilliant core * Evening Standard * A fine crime writer of Chandlerian subtlety though in a vein of sheer toughness very much his own * The Times * That he could channel this pain and misery into some of the greatest crime novels ever written is a testament to his skill as a writer and his spirit as a man. If this is the first Chester Himes novel you will read then, believe me, you are in for a treat. He belongs with those great demented realists ... whose writing pitilessly exposes the ridiculousness of the human condition Hieronymus Bosch meets Miles Davis * The New York Times * Chester Himes is the great lost crime writer, as well a great American dissident novelist per se, and an essential witness to his times. Every one of his beyond-cool Harlem novels is cherished by every reader who finds it.