Jeff,
Re your comment below:
"7. The novels were based in New York City."
One might also add:
7a. And not a realistic New York, but a nightmarish, twisted
funhouse mirror-image of New York, that starkly contrasts
with more realistic depcitions like Lawrence Block's and Ed
McBain's.
Interestingly, it's been suggested, by Max Allan Collins
among others, that Himes's version of Harlem isn't really
modeled on Harlem at all.
Knowing that the books were written for a French audience,
Himes set the books in Harlem knowing that that's where
French people would expect a book about American blacks to be
set.
In fact, according to Collins and others, the geography of
Himes's Harlem more closely parallels Cleveland's black
ghetto located in Cleveland PD's Third Precinct, the
so-called "Roaring Third," where Himes actually spent more
time.
I'm not familiar enough with either place to comment, but I'd
be interested in what Himes scholars on this forum had to
say.
JIM DOHERTY
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