Chester Himes

A dark and witty work of hardboiled detective fiction set in the mean streets of New York, Chester Himes's A Rage in Harlem includes an introduction by Luc Sante in Penguin Modern Classics....

New York is sweltering in the summer heat, and Harlem is close to the boiling point....

Con man Deak O'Hara is out of the state penitentiary and back on the street working the scam of a lifetime....

An explosive and shocking hardboiled classic that explores the shadowy underbelly of New York as a urban civil war erupts on the side streets of Harlem....

From the start, nothing goes fright for Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones. They are disciplined for use of excessive force. Grave Digger is shot and his death announced in a hoax radio bulletin....

Outside the apartment where a wake is going on, the manager of the A&P across the street is robbed....

A 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....

Many people had reasons for killing Galen, a big Greek with too much money and too great a liking for young black girls....