The Heat's On

by Chester Himes

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780394759975
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/28/1988
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	330,058
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

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 (1945), 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 (1965)—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.

Editorial Reviews

A rattlingly good action melodrama spiced with a maximum of humor and a minimum of self-consciousness.”
    —The New York Times 

“One of the most important American writers of the 20th century. . . . A quirky American genius.”
    —Walter Mosley

“Some of the most exciting—and comic—crime novels ever written.”
    —The Washington Post
 
“Chester Himes is the best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler.”
    —San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher