Book Review: The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes

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Keywords: crime fiction, Harlem Detective series, noir, detective, Black crime authors, detective fiction

The Real Cool Killers is the second book in the Harlem Detective series. In the previously reviewed A Rage in Harlem, Black detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones are introduced and make a memorable impression but control most of the action in the story. By this third book the two detectives are decidedly front and center.

A white man has been killed in Harlem, shot in the head after a dramatic chase down Lenox Avenue pursued by Sonny, high on marajuana, and firing a pistol at the running man. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed respond and find the dead man surrounded by Sonny and members of a street gang called The Real Cool Moslems (they are not Moslems). Sonny, still holding his gun, is naturally arrested and handcuffed. When they attempt to search the Moslems, the gang taunt the detectives. One of them, Caleb, makes the tragic mistake of throwing a liquid on Coffin Ed which triggers a blind rage and PTSD flashback when acid was thrown in his face (see A Rage in Harlem) and Ed shoots and kills the boy. Since it was a white man killed in Harlem, all the police brass show up and the Chief suspends Coffin Ed though it is more of a token guesture to appease the public. In the confusion, Sonny and the Muslims have disappeared. It is quickly determined that Sonny couldn't have been the killer since his gun only fired blanks. With his partner suspended, Grave Digger is left to conduct the investigation on his own which he does in his face slapping, head spitting, rage. As Digger probes, he finds that there are [good] reasons why Harlem residents would like to see the white man dead.

Himes wrote his Harlem Detective series while an expatriate living in France. It is a testimony to Himes' skill as a writer that he is able to imbue his stories with such a rich vibrancy for the Harlem location and it's people without ever having been in Harlem. For me, a reader, Himes put me there, on the streets, in the bars, restaurants, and homes.

These stories are very violent and Coffin Ed and Grave Digger have no compunctions when it comes to using their guns and slapping around anyone foolish enough to hold back information. The detectives perform this violence against their own people but do so because of their own need to bring order and an understanding of how the Harlem blacks are conditioned to respond to authority. Himes' books are very much about racism. In one scene, a white man objects to Digger's treatment of a woman and Digger responds:

If you white people insist on coming up to Harlem where you force colored people to live in vice-and-crime-ridden slums, it's my job to see that you are safe.
The white man turned bright red.

Later, Digger is asked by the police Commissioner why such a large crowd quickly assembled at the scene of the murder. Was it just a case of morbid curiosity? Himes, through Digger, explains the reality of things to the white brass:

Well, it's like this, Commissioner, Grave Digger said. Every day in Harlem, two and three times a day, the colored people see some colored man being chased by another colored man with a knife or an axe, or by a white man with his fists. But it's only once in a blue moon they get to see a white man being chased by one of them. A big white man at that. This was an event. A chance to see some white blood spilled for a change, and spilled by a black man, at that. That was greater than Emancipation Day. As they say up in Harlem, that was the greatest. That's what Ed and I are always up against when we try to make Harlem safe for white people.

Not that last sentence. Ed and Digger have to keep Harlem safe for white people.

Himes' dialogue with a great ear for dialect, his descriptive setting, his action scenes, his lean prose style, and above, his ability to portray the lot of black people make his Harlem Detective stories just as powerful today as when they were written in the late 50s and early 60s. I can't recommend them enough and hope they are discovered by a newer, younger audience.