The Essential Harlem Detectives: A Rage in Harlem, the Real Cool Killers, the Crazy Kill, Cotton Comes to Harlem

The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice - A one-volume selection of four novels in the legendary detective series--blistering, groundbreaking capers set in Harlem's criminal underworld--by master crime writer Chester Himes. With an introduction by New York Times bestselling author S.A. Cosby. "[Himes] put a spin on crime fiction--emphasizing urban atmosphere, street smarts, and uptown carryings-on--unlike anything the genre had previously seen." --The Boston Globe "Himes's Harlem saga vies with the novels of David Goodis and Jim Thompson as the inescapable achievement of postwar American crime fiction." --The New York Times "His implacable drive to examine the Black experience, the disingenuous nature of the American Dream, the reality of pain and sorrow and what it does to the soul, that is what makes [Himes] the bard of the existential African American psyche." --S.A. Cosby, from his IntroductionHere in one volume is an exceptional selection from Chester Himes's acclaimed Harl