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Review
A bawdy, brazen rollercoaster of a novel . . . the wildest (New York Times Book Review )
Himes wrote spectacularly successful entertainments, filled with gems of descriptive writing, plots that barely sidestep chaos, characters surreal, grotesque, comic, hip, Harlem recollected as a place that can make you laugh, cry, shudder. (John Edgar Wideman )
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 of Chandlerian subtlety though in a vein of sheer toughness very much his own (The Times )
That he could channel this pain and misery into some of the greatest crime novels ever written is a testament to his skill as a writer and his spirit as a man. If this is the first Chester Himes novel you will read then, believe me, you are in for a treat. (Noel "Razor" Smith )
He belongs with those great demented realists ... whose writing pitilessly exposes the ridiculousness of the human condition (Will Self )
Hieronymus Bosch meets Miles Davis (The New York Times )
Chester Himes is the great lost crime writer, as well a great American dissident novelist per se, and an essential witness to his times. Every one of his beyond-cool Harlem novels is cherished by every reader who finds it. (Jonathan Lethem )
Product Description
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'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 a new Introduction by Will Self.
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Customer Reviews
Deke O'Malley is sponsoring a rally for his Back-to-Africa Movement, which he organized soon after being released from Atlanta's state penitentiary. At the rally, he collects $87,000 from gullible families reserving space on one of his three non-existent ocean liners. The money is stolen by white gunmen and hidden in a bale of cotton. The cotton is picked up by Uncle Bud, a junkman, and eventually finds its way to Billie Belle, an exotic dancer at the Cotton Club. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed are relentless in their search for the cotton, Deke O'Malley and anyone else who may help in solving the crime. One such person is Colonel Robert L. Calhoun of Birmingham, Alabama and the Back-to-the-Southland Movement.
There is very little waste in this book. The dialogue and descriptions are very authentic. The writing is loaded with humor. I found it hard to put down right from the beginning.
A film based on the novel was produced by Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. for United Artists in 1970. The screenplay was written by Ossie Davis and Arnold Perl. Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques starred as Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, respectively. Red Foxx was Uncle Bud.
Raymond Chandler wrote that detectives must walk the mean streets, but they must not themselves be mean. Well, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed walk the mean streets just fine, but the "not being mean" part gives them trouble; they doubt the feasibility of solving a case without, say, slapping around a few witnesses or firing a few shots into a crowd. Despite the detectives' unhesitating brutality, this novel compares well to the best of Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. This is due not only to the spot-on dialogue and the stark, vivid character depictions, but also the detectives' uncompromising determination to bring justice to Harlem. The plot is better, i.e., less predictable, than any of Parker's, and Himes's depiction of 1960s Harlem is so bizarre, yet compelling, that it invites comparison to Carl Hiassen's Florida rather than Chandler's LA. Add to this Himes's unique, excruciatingly honest depiction of race relations in the 1960s, and you have one of the best detective novels I have read in years.
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