Description

‘The new crime and espionage series from Penguin Classics makes for a mouth-watering prospect’ Daily Telegraph

A con-man is swindling the poor folk of Harlem out of their life savings – and now all hell’s broken loose.

The ‘Reverend’ Deke O’Malley has just made $87,000 by duping his followers, only for white gunmen to hijack the rally and escape with the cash hidden inside a bale of cotton. Now ace detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson must get the good people of Harlem their money back by any means necessary, in a raucous, breakneck adventure involving double-crosses, exotic dancers, a racist colonel and a whole pile of bodies…

Publisher Review

The greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler. * Sunday Times * A bawdy, brazen rollercoaster of a novel . . . the wildest. * New York Times Book Review * Chester Himes is one of the towering figures of the black literary tradition. His command of nuances of character and dynamics of plot is preeminent among writers of crime fiction. He is a master craftsman. -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A fantasia with a hard brilliant core. * Evening Standard * A fine crime writer ... in a vein of sheer toughness very much his own. * The Times *