My enormous thanks to Christian Lewis for sending me a copy of The Essential Harlem Detectives by Chester Himes in return for an honest review. I had hoped to share that review before Christmas as The Essential Harlem Detectives would make a fantastic gift book, but sadly there was a little too much life happening beyond my ability to deal with it. I am, therefore, delighted finally to share my review today.

Part of the Everyman’s Library, The Essential Harlem Detectives was published on 4th January 2024 and is available for purchase through the links here.

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 Littérature Policière 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-colour foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-colour illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author’s life and times.

My Review of The Essential Harlem Detectives

A collector’s edition of four Chester Himes books: A Rage in Harlem, The Real Cool Killers, The Crazy Kill and Cotton Comes to Harlem.

I’m going to be honest and say I haven’t read all four stories completely yet; partly because I have found the first couple much more gritty than anticipated and partly because I have so many other books awaiting review, but I wanted to make sure that other readers were aware of this quite astonishing edition.

I wouldn’t usually comment on the physical properties of fiction books written for adults, but with a sumptuous red cover with classic black and gold title and author lurking beneath the highly atmospheric slip cover, and a golden place marker ribbon, The Essential Harlem Detectives feels like a high quality product that would make a super gift.

That said, the contents are pretty astounding too. As a white middle aged British woman living in the 21st century, it’s quite hard for me to judge the impact of Chester Himes’s writing, but I would advise reading S.A. Cosby’s Introduction to the collection before beginning the stories, because, along with the fascinating Chronology, the reader gets an insight into the social and historical impact of this collection and into Chester Himes as a man. I could see The Essential Harlem Detectives being a book to return to time and again or even studied academically. The Select Bibliography would also suggest that and means that the book exists outside its covers, giving readers other avenues to explore.

I was expecting a golden era cosy crime collection and that could not be further from the truth. The Essential Harlem Detectives is written with unflinching clarity about the lives of often corrupt people existing in an even more corrupt world so that the lines of what constitutes acceptable moral behaviour are completely obfuscated. Protagonists Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are the investigative leads, but as their names suggest, they are not above using somewhat violent and underhand tactics. And yet they are not abhorrent. Chester Himes neither glorifies nor denigrates them. He makes no real authorial comment about them, but rather it is left to the reader to determine their own reactions and if I’m honest, I rather admired them – almost against my will.

The stories are fast paced, often quite violent and disturbing.  The dialogue is written with a realism which is highly engaging. I did find some of the actions and themes in The Essential Harlem Detectives uncomfortable – especially, for example, in relation to ‘God’s will’ being done – but that shouldn’t put off other readers. These are certainly stories to entertain, but they also educate and unsettle so that they are thought-provoking too. Indeed, this is a collection that engenders strong emotions in the reader because it has a dark humour, a gritty reality and leaves the reader wondering just how far we have come in terms of race relations and institutional corruption.

It feels wrong to say The Essential Harlem Detectives is entertaining (but it is) because I did feel uneasy at times, but equally, I think it is a collection that deserves frequent rereading to understand fully the nuances, the messages and the sheer impact of writing that is incisive, often unforgiving and always interesting. Read it for yourself!

About Chester Himes

Chester Himes was born in 1909 in Missouri and began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery (1929-36). From his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Himes dealt with the social and psychological repercussions of being black in a white-dominated society. In 1953 Himes moved to Europe, where he met and was strongly influenced by Richard Wright. It was in France that he began his best-known series of crime novels – including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) – featuring two Harlem policemen. As with Himes’s earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humour. He died in Spain in 1984.