Chester Himes (1909-1984) was nearly fifty when he began writing detective stories and novels. But what a fifty years it was. He had served seven years in the Ohio State Penitentiary, where he had discovered Black Mask magazine. " When I could see the end of my time inside, I bought myself a typewriter and taught myself touch typing. I'd been reading stories by Dashiell Hammett in Black Mask and I thought I could do them just as well. When my stories finally appeared, the other convicts thought the same thing. There was nothing to it. All you had to do was tell it like it is." And tell it he did. His stories about Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson were not throwaway violent pulp stories, but angry tales about growing up in a bleak city with an even bleaker future. As the timeline in the novels progresses, the characters grow more disillusioned and cynical about their jobs, their own people, and the world they live in. A longtime staple in France, his first crime novel, A Rage in Harlem, which was written at the request of Marcel Duhamel, editor of the famous Serie Noire line of Gallimard, was awarded the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere in 1958.

Love and jealousy erupt into violence in The Crazy Kill , a classic thriller inChester Himes's trailblazing Harlem Detectives series.

One early morning,Reverend Short is watching from his bedroom window as the A&P across the street is robbed. As he triesto see the thief get away, the opium-addicted preacher leanstoo far and falls out--but he isunscathed, thanks to an enormousbread basket outside the bakery downstairs. As the crowd gathers to see what happened, a shocking discovery is made: There is another body in the bread basket, and Valentine Haines is dead,really dead. It's up to Grave Digger Jones and Coffin EdJohnson ti find out who murderedVal.