hi everybody!
Just finished Chester Himes's great classic, _Cotton Comes to
Harlem_. This is a fantastic book. Out of the last dozen or
so hardboiled/noir novels I've read, this was a breath of
fresh air. Chester Himes is a rare breed. While dealing out
some truly hardboiled action, he made me laugh, again and
again. And this is not the absurd slapstick humor of a Carl
Hiaasen, but instead perhaps closer to the insightful, satir-
ical and wise humor of Mark Twain, with a delightfully wicked
twist.
"Her hips were pitching like a rowboat on a stormy sea, but
her cold, aloof face said: Your eyes may shine and your teeth
may grit, but none of this fine ass will you git."
Alright, maybe we are talking a little bit of Hiaasen here.
;-)
The plot involves two black New York City detectives, Coffin
Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, following a trail of
murder and mayhem involving a back-to-Africa scam foisted off
on the poor Harlem residents by a con artist named Deke
O'Hara. A bloody armed robbery switches ownership of the
swindled money, which is promptly lost in a bale of cotton.
The story follows a great host of characters in the search
for the lost cotton bale.
miker
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