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Cotton Comes to Harlem

by Chester Himes

A Harlem rally, a stolen collection, and a tangled investigation

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A Harlem rally, a stolen collection, and a tangled investigation

Set in Harlem, this hard-boiled mystery turns a Back-to-Africa movement rally into the center of a large-scale con. When the money collected for the cause is stolen and concealed in a bale of cotton, NYPD detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones must untangle a scheme involving competing claims to the missing haul. The setup connects street-level deception, a public gathering, and the detectives’ investigation, giving the book’s crime plot a specific Harlem context. It is part of Chester Himes’s Harlem Detectives series.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Fans of hard-boiled detective fiction and crime plots built around cons and stolen money
  • Readers interested in mysteries set in Harlem and featuring NYPD detectives
  • Those exploring Chester Himes’s Harlem Detectives series

Themes

Fraud and deceptionStolen money and competing claimsLaw enforcement and crimeHarlem setting

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

From "the best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler" (San Francisco Chronicle) comes a hard-hitting, entertaining entry in the trailblazing Harlem Detectives series about two NYPD detectives who must piece together the clues of the scam of a lifetime.

Flim-flam man Deke O'Hara is no sooner out of Atlanta's state penitentiary than he's back on the streets working a big scam. As sponsor of the Back-to-Africa movement, he's counting on a big Harlem rally to produce a massive collection--for his own private charity. But the take is hijacked by white gunmen and hidden in a bale of cotton that suddenly everyone wants to get his hands on. As NYPD detectives "Coffin Ed" Johnson and "Grave Digger" Jones face the complexity of the scheme, we are treated to Himes's brand of hard-boiled crime fiction at its very best.
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