The Crazy Kill
  • Published: 25 February 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241692639
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $26.00

The Crazy Kill

Formats & editions
Paperback
25 Feb 2025
EBook
28 Nov 2024
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A classic thriller from the Harlem Detective series, where love, jealousy and many-peopled mayhem abounds

Big 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.
  • Published: 25 February 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241692639
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $26.00
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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

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

Praise for The Crazy Kill

The greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler

Sunday Times

A fine crime writer... in a vein of sheer toughness very much his own

The Times

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.