Book cover for The Heat's On by Chester Himes

The Heat's On

2011 Released
176 Pages
3-4 Hours
★ 3.91 480 ratings
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
Vintage Crime/Black LizardISBN 9780307803252

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 minimum of self-consciousness." —The New York Times
 
From the start, nothing goes right for Coffin Ed and Grave Digger. They are disciplined for use of excessive force. Grave Digger is shot and his death announced in a hoax radio bulletin. Bodies pile up faster than Coffin Ed and Grave Digger can run. Yet, try as they might, they always seem to be one hot step behind the cause of all the mayhem—three million dollars’ worth of heroin and a giant albino called Pinky.

Chester Himes

Chester Himes began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery from 1929 to 1936. From his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go, Himes dealt with the social and psychological repercussions of being black in a white-dominated society. Beginning in 1953, Himes moved to Europe, where he met and was strongly influenced by Richard Wright. It was in France that he began his best-known series of crime novels-including Cotton Comes to Harlem-featuring two Harlem policemen. As with Himes's earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humor. He died in Spain in 1984.

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