Ayo Onatade is an avid reader of crime and mystery fiction. She has been writing reviews, interviews and articles on the subject for the last 12 years; with an eclectic taste from historical to hardboiled, short stories and noir films
Chester Himes is sadly one of those authors whose novels are often forgotten in our contemporary times. It could be argued that Himes’ body of work is as important as that of Goodis, Highsmith, Thompson, Hammett, and Chandler in the Crime Fiction Genre.
Whilst there are actually nine books in what is known as the Harlem Detective series, Everyman Library Classics have quite rightly published four of the most popular in this volume. The two main characters are detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. The icy, wisecracking detectives best known for their own style of brutality which constantly brings them into the callous and murderous world of criminals, conmen, and femme fatales.
If you want to read a series of novels that will give you the lowdown on the roughest and meanest streets in New York’s old Harlem, then you can do no better than to dig deep into Himes’s Harlem Detective series - arguably hardboiled crime fiction at its zenith.
This new edition comes with a striking coloured illustrated jacket, along with a new introduction by Shawn A. Cosby, selected bibliography and chronology of the author’s life and times.
With this new volume - the works of Chester Himes will no longer languish amongst authors that are too often forgotten, and that the Harlem Detectives series will gain a richly deserved new lease of life.
This is an edition not only to be savoured but should be proudly displayed.
