Cotton Comes to Harlem Paperback - 1988
by Chester Himes
Con man Deak O'Hara is out of the state penitentiary and back on the street working the scam of a lifetime. The $87,000 he has schemed to get has been hijacked and hidden in a bale of cotton. Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones are on everyone's trail in one of their most entertaining thrillers.
About this book
Cotton Comes to Harlem is the sixth and best known of Chester Himes’ Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson Mysteries. It was later adapted into a film starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, and Redd Foxx, that touted Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed as “Two Detectives Only a Mother Could Love.” When a con-man rigs the collection of a Back-To-Africa rally, money is hi-jacked by white gunman and hidden in a cotton bale. That bale becomes the center of the investigation, set against the backdrop of 1960s Harlem.
Chester Himes was born in Missouri in 1909. He began writing while serving a prison sentence for a jewel theft and published just short of twenty novels before his death in 1984. Among his best-known thrillers are Blind Man with a Pistol, Cotton Comes to Harlem, The Crazy Kill, A Rage in Harlem, The Real Cool Killers, and The Heat's On.
From the jacket flap
Black flim-flam man Deke O'Hara is no sooner out of Atlanta's state penitentiary than he's back on the streets working the scam of a lifetime. As sponsor of the Back-to-Africa movement he's counting on the big Harlem rally to produce a big collection--for his own private charity. But the take ($87,000) is hijacked by white gunmen and hidden in a bale of cotton that suddenly everyone wants to get his hands on. With Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones on everyone's trail and piecing together the complexity of the scheme, Cotton Comes to Harlem is one of Himes's hardest-hitting and most entertaining thrillers.
First Edition Identification
Cotton Comes to Harlem was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 1965, with ‘First American edition 1965’ on copyright page. The original US dust jacket has a $4.50 price point. This novel was originally published in France under the title Retour in Afrique (Back to Africa) in 1964 by Librairie Plon. -
Details
- Title Cotton Comes to Harlem
- Author Chester Himes
- Binding Paperback
- Edition Reissue
- Pages 160
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, New York, New York, U.S.A.
- Date 1988-11-28
- ISBN 9780394759999 / 0394759990
- Weight 0.33 lbs (0.15 kg)
- Dimensions 8.06 x 5.3 x 0.44 in (20.47 x 13.46 x 1.12 cm)
-
Themes
- Ethnic Orientation: African American
- Library of Congress subjects Detective and mystery stories, Police - New York (State) - New York
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 88040045
- Dewey Decimal Code FIC
Media reviews
Citations
- Newsweek, 07/13/2009, Page 49
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