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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 greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler' Sunday TimesJackson's woman has found him a foolproof way to make money - a technique for turning ten dollar bills into hundreds. But when the scheme somehow fails, Jackson is left broke, wanted by the police and desperately racing to get back both his money and his loving Imabelle.The first of Chester Himes's novels featuring the hardboiled Harlem detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, A Rage in Harlem has swagger, brutal humour, lurid violence, a hearse loaded with gold and a conman dressed as a Sister of Mercy.With an Introduction by Luc Sante

'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

'The greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler' Sunday TimesDetectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones have lost two criminals. Pinky ran off - but it shouldn't be hard to track down a giant albino in Harlem. Jake the drug dealer, though, isn't coming back - he died after Grave Digger punched him in the stomach. And his death might cost them both their badges. Unless they can track down the cause of all this mayhem - like the African with his throat slit and the dog the size of a lion with an open head wound.Chester Himes's hardboiled tales of Harlem have a barely contained chaos and a visceral, macabre edge all their own.

'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.

'Outrageous, shocking, wonderful' The New York TimesA golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean has been seen sailing along the streets of Harlem. A hit-and-run victim's been hit so hard she got embedded in the wall of a convent. A shootout with three heistmen dressed as cops has left an important politician in a coma - and a lot of money missing. And Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are the ones who have to piece it all together.All Shot Up is chaotic, bloody - and completely unforgettable. Chester Himes wrote detective fiction darker, dirtier and more extreme than anyone else dared.

'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...

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.

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.

'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

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.

Published in 1952 as "Cast the First Stone", this is Chester Himes's first autobiographical novel. It is a sardonic tale of an African-American's debasement and transfiguration in an American penitentiary.

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 vanishesThe 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.

The shocking and explosive hardboiled classic: From murderers to prostitutes, corrupt politicians and racist white detectives, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, Harlem's toughest detective duo, must carry the day against an absurdist world of racism and class warfare.