Cotton Comes to Harlem (Chester Himes, 1965)

 After a rally for a 'Back To Africa' event in Harlem is robbed, police officers 'Grave Digger' and 'Coffin Ed' are put on the case. They soon find themselves following a trail of clues, back-street informants, femme fatales, and Southern racists, to a mysterious bale of cotton that everyone wants but no one can hold onto without winding up dead...

Written by Chester Hines, Cotton Comes To Harlem is a great pulpy detective thriller set in 1960s Harlem. Published in 1965, this acidic look at two hard-nosed black cops feels rather timeless.

Racism has always been a part of the American project, so it should come as now surprise that the issues present in Homes' novel - economic and political isolation; systemic oppression (the white cops feel like they could walk off the page onto the streets of 2018 America).

While the book's perspective feels radical in terms of how it shows the other side of the law enforcement, it is not a beacon of progress. Some elements - such as the sexualisation of the female characters - feel less enlightened, although stylistically in line with the genre Himes is writing in.

One of the chief joys of the book is the characterisation of our anti-heroes Grave Digger and Coffin Ed. Both hard-bitten, violent and empathetic to the community they are meant to serve and protect, they juggle the genre's fascination with vigilante justice with an understanding of how the system of law enforcement maintains racial inequality. It is a refreshing dimension that adds a layer of nuance to the violent loner cop archetype, that goes beyond their propensity for violence.

The novel moves at a clip - I blasted through it in a couple of days - and it possesses a great, dark sense of humour: The Southern villain everyone compares to Colonel Sanders; the light-skinned suspect who wears blackface to escape the police station; fake priest Deke O'Malley's hypocritical seduction of a dead man's wife.

The story is relatively clear, and Himes provides a few shifts in perspective that clue the reader into what is going on without spelling it out or making the investigation feel predictable.


While not redundant, it is the gallery of characters and the world that make Cotton Comes To Harlem so compelling.


Coffin Ed and Gravedigger are never just cops on a case; they are still two black men in America. Like all great fictional detectives, they are defined by having to move between multiple worlds, without having both feet in one place. While they are from Harlem, they are police men in Harlem. They are trying to walk a line between upholding the law and protecting the community.


The great thing about this duality, at least as I - a white Pakeha from New Zealand - saw it, was that it did not negate or obscure the issue of race - whether to temper the way they dealt with the biases of their white colleagues; or separate from the protests and campaigns of O'Malley's 'Back To Africa' movement, or the Black Muslims.


Though they use violence frequently, our anti-heroes display a more developed sense of empathy for the motives of the people they come into contact with, and are unafraid to stand up to their superiors.
While the book's politics add meat, there are elements that betray its age - the portrayal of female characters is straight out of the pulp tradition. As a fan of this kind of potboiler, it added a note of familiarity, but there is nothing that revisionary about any of them. They are just wives, femme fatales or somewhere in-between.


Overall, Cotton Comes To Harlem is really great detective novel. And if it was not clear, it is really fun to read. I am already on-board for 50s-60s thrillers like this, but it is really enjoyable - the prose is colourful but economical, and it moves like a bullet. There are eight other novels featuring Coffin Ed and Gravedigger, as well as three movies, so don't be surprised if they make more appaearances on the blog in the future.