Cotton Comes to Harlem
  • Published: 25 July 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241639221
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $26.00

Cotton Comes to Harlem

Formats & editions
Paperback
25 Jul 2023
Paperback
2 Jul 2021
EBook
5 May 2021
Buy from…
The Nile Mighty Ape BookHub Whitcoulls The Warehouse Paper Plus Fishpond Book Hero Unity Books University Book Shop Find Local Retailers

Scams, heists and murders abound in a high-energy caper

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, highly unorthodox and gun-happy detectives, 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.
  • Published: 25 July 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241639221
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:

About the author

Chester Himes

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 20 to 25 years in jail. In jail he began to write short stories, some of which were published in Esquire.

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 by La Série Noire to write the first of his Harlem detective novels, La reine des pommes/A Rage in Harlem, which won the 1957 Grand Prix du Roman Policier. In 1969 Himes moved to Spain, where he died in 1984.

portrait photo of Chester Himes

Also by Chester Himes

All God's Chillun Got Pride
Yesterday Will Make You Cry
If He Hollers, Let Him Go
The Crazy Kill
The Big Gold Dream
Blind Man with a Pistol
The Essential Harlem Detectives
See all

Praise for Cotton Comes to Harlem

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