A Rage in Harlem

A Rage in Harlem, crime novel by American writer Chester Himes that was the first book in what became known as his Harlem Detective cycle of novels. Published in French in 1957 with the title La reine des pommes (“The Queen of Fools”), it was released in the U.S. the same year as For Love of Immabelle and by 1965 had acquired the name A Rage in Harlem. It was filmed as A Rage in Harlem in 1991.

For this book, Himes, already a noted novelist, adapted the hard-boiled thriller tradition of such writers as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, translating it from the west coast of the U.S. to New York City’s Harlem and trading white loner detectives for Black protagonists within a Black context. In doing so, he provided an inspirational new template for later writers including Ishmael Reed, Walter Mosley, Valerie Wilson Wesley, and Attica Locke to illuminate the Black community through this form of fictional expression.

A Rage in Harlem tells the story of the naive Jackson, who is so enamored with the beautiful Imabelle that he allows her to persuade him to give all his savings to a conman who claims he can return it tenfold. The operation is raided by U.S. marshals, and Jackson now has to steal money from his boss to bribe the marshals, and Immabelle disappears. Trouble snowballs as Jackson turns to his twin brother, Goldy, a drug addict who raises money dressed as a nun and also works as a police snitch.

A Rage in Harlem introduces the tough and violent police detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and his partner Gravedigger Jones, who will go on to feature as the protagonists in the later entries in the Harlem cycle, though they play a small role in this novel.

The story is fast-paced and complex, and the writing vivid and evocative. Violence frequently coincides with an unsettling grim humor, and social commentary permeates the story. A Rage in Harlem is rightly considered a classic of noir fiction.