A Rage In Harlem By Chester Himes: Blistering Brilliance
A Rage In Harlem by Chester Himes: blistering brilliance, this post-war thriller drags you by the collar for a couple hundred pages and leaves you begging for more.
You have not ever experienced a New York City experience like this, or at least not for decades.
A Rage In Harlem is the first book in the Harlem Detectives Series, and I would give it an easy 5/5 stars.
This is a crime fiction master at work.
In this tale, you can throw out all of the formulaic tropes and plot-points, as a wholly innovative story unfolds.
Though the infamous Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones – two Harlem detectives with loud, long-muzzled revolvers and cold, quiet demeanors and a shoot-first, ask questions later mentality – are introduced in A Rage In Harlem, they are not the focal point.
The protagonist is a mild-mannered, honest, god-fearing man named Jackson who is hopelessly in love.
Jackson – the most honest, gullible, and endearing character I have read in some time – accidentally unleashes the most insane bout of carnage Harlem sees for many a day!
This tale put bullet holes in my eyes, and I want more!
The story follows the Harlem undertaker’s assistant as he is taken in by a wily woman named Imabelle, who has friends that can too easily multiply her lover’s hard-earned cash investment with a burning bills con.
But old ‘in the hills’ rural cons in the Big City are themselves a con, and everyone winds up going after Imabelle’s trunk full of raw gold.
To escape the crooked lawmen, Jackson must become a crook himself, and to do this he has asked for help from one of the most fun and realistic characters in fiction: the long-con artist and twin brother of our protagonist, Goldy!
Goldy’s racket is walking the Harlem avenues dressed as a nun selling tickets to Heaven, or at the least guilting the unsuspecting passersby into letting the Sister bum some change in exchange for Goldy’s spouting lucky lottery numbers.
The twin admonishes his brother on falling prey to a woman clearly using and conning him, and since Jackson is so set on saving his ‘damsel in distress’, Goldy goes so far as to drug his own brother for days, while he undertakes gold prospecting himself.
Goldy is also a junkie, and readers will feel the ugly pull of the heroin in the lifelong con-man turned brother’s keeper’s desire to be flush with money.
The borough to the north of NYC is a fully-fledged character that can be both mortal enemy and life-saving friend to those traversing the Harlem streets.
There is humor, satire, and suspense delivered like shrapnel.
All the while, readers are treading the inside look at Harlem, at the racist undertones – and overtones – of New York City, where depending on the shade of a person’s skin, their position in the city, and their geographic whereabouts a New Yorker is treated very differently.
And all of that is done expertly weaving in and out of and being an integral part of the plot and story arc.
The tale is enthralling!
How had I read every Chandler book and most of Mickey Spillane’s catalog and not read all of Chester Himes?
To quote: “Himes undertook to do for Harlem what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles.” —Newsweek. [bookshop.org]
The Forgotten Fiction Grade: YEA (read it!)!
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“A Rage In Harlem By Chester Himes: Blistering Brilliance” Was Written By R.J. Huneke.
