Chester Himes

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  • Bibliography:
    24 Books (1 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1973
  • Latest Book:
    February 2024
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Full Series List in Order

Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones

All Shot Up (Oct-1975)
The Crazy Kill (Mar-1985)
Cotton Comes to Harlem (Dec-1988)
The Heat's on (Dec-1988)
The Real Cool Killers (Dec-1988)
A Rage in Harlem (Dec-1989)
Blind Man with a Pistol (Dec-1989)
The Big Gold Dream (Apr-1996)

Book List in Order: 24 titles

  • Black on Black

  • All Shot Up

    Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones

    In this gripping installment of the maverick Harlem Detectives series, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones investigate a series of seemingly unrelated, brutal crimes.A gold Cadillac, about as large as an ocean liner, rocks a woman to the pavement...

  • The Crazy Kill

    Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones

    From “one of the most important American writers of the 20th century” (Walter Mosley) comes a classic thriller in the trailblazing Harlem Detectives series, in which love and jealousy erupt into violence.  One early morning, Revere...

  • Cotton Comes to Harlem

    Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones

    From “the best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler” (San Francisco Chronicle) comes a hard-hitting, entertaining entry in the trailblazing Harlem Detectives series about two NYPD detectives who must piece together the clues of the scam ...

  • The Heat's on

    Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones

    Detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones are in the hot seat in one of the most chaotic, brutally funny novels in the groundbreaking Harlem Detectives series. • "A rattlingly good action melodrama spiced with a maximum of humor and a minimu...

  • The Real Cool Killers

    Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones

    The book that Walter Kirn said was like “Hieronymus Bosch meets Miles Davis" (The New York Times). • Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones get personally involved in a gang dispute in one of the most provocative cases in Chester Himes’s grou...

  • Blind Man with a Pistol

    Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones

    At once grotesquely comic and unflinchingly violent: the final entry in the trailblazing Harlem Detectives series, set in New York in the sweltering summer heat. “A sensual, surreal, cartoonishly violent and breathtakingly bawdy comic universe.” ...

  • A Rage in Harlem

    Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones

    A Rage in Harlem is a ripping introduction to Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, patrolling New York City’s roughest streets in Chester Himes’s groundbreaking Harlem Detectives series. 
     
    For love of fine, wily Imabelle, haple...

  • Tang

    in Murderous Schemes

    When plotting a murder (figuratively speaking), the mystery writer has at hand any number of M.O.'s including such tried and true conventions as the locked room, the unbreakable alibi, the double bluff, the mistaken identity, and many others. Indeed,...



  • The Third Generation

  • Plan B

    The final, posthumous installment of the ground-breaking Harlem Detectives series, a novel of explosive, apocalyptic violence, and a startling vision of the effects of racism in AmericaThe roots of racism and persecution in Tomsson Black's ancestry a...

  • A Case of Rape

    From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a brilliant, short novel about four black men in Paris wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering a white womanIn spare, dispassionate prose with all the austerity of a deposition, A Case o...

  • Run Man Run

    In this knockout standalone crime novel from the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a white cop’s murderous outburst leads to a pulse-pounding chase to silence a witnessA few days after Christmas, a white cop in New York is as drunk ...

  • The Big Gold Dream

    Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones

    In this page-turning installment of the classic Harlem Detectives series, a woman dies at a con man's religious street revival, and her elusive pile of cash vanishesAlberta Wright drops dead on the street during a sermon by the charismatic con man Sw...

  • The End of a Primitive

    Jesse Robinson wakes from his nightmare to dirty, fitful real life in a Harlem slum.

    Kriss wakes up alone divorced, disillusioned, in her plush Manhattan apartment. They have nothing in common. Just one amazing, passionate weekend in Chicago and a...

  • Lonely Crusade

    A classic of African-American fiction, Chester Himes's tale of a young black man who becomes a union organizer during WWII examines major problems in American life: racism, anti-Semitism, labor strife, and corruption.
    "Mr. Himes undertakes to cons...

  • Yesterday Will Make You Cry

    A classic restored-the complete and unexpurgated text of a great African-American writer's brutal and lyrical novel of prison life. First published in reduced and bowdlerized form in 1952 as Cast the First Stone, Yesterday Will Make You Cry was Chest...

  • If He Hollers Let Him Go

    A powerful story of racism that's as pertinent today as when the book was first published
    This story of a man living every day in fear of his life for simply being black is as powerful today as it was when it was first published in 1947. The novel...

  • Modern Classics A Rage In Harlem

    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. Jackson's woman has found him a foolproof way to make money ...



  • Modern Classics Cotton Comes To Harlem

    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 Grav...

  • Modern Classics The Heat's On

    Detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones have lost two criminals. Pinky ran off - but it shouldn't be hard to track down a giant albino in Harlem. Jake the dwarf drug dealer, though, isn't coming back - he died after Grave Digger punched him in th...

  • Modern Classics The Real Cool Killers

    The night's over for Ulysses Galen. It started going bad for the big Greek when a knife was drawn, then there was an axe, then he was being chased and shot at. Now Galen is lying dead in the middle of a Harlem street. But the night's just beginning f...

  • The Primitive

  • The Essential Harlem Detectives

    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....

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Chester Himes has published 24 books.

Chester Himes does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Essential Harlem Detectives, was published in February 2024.

The first book by Chester Himes, Black on Black, was published in January 1973.

Yes. Chester Himes has 1 series.
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