College dropout, pimp, bootlegger, and convicted armed-robber, Chester Himes began writing his acclaimed "Harlem Cycle" of crime novels in Paris in 1957. His most famous creations, the black detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones work as a team and deal with transgressors in a ruthless, violent way, brandishing and using huge guns to settle disputes. The absurdity of the level of violence the two detectives both mete out and suffer is presented as representative of the wider absurdity of the lives of African Americans, and perhaps the absurdities of Himes's own life. Whatever Coffin Ed and Gravedigger do, they cannot end the cycle of crime and violence that grips black city life, just as, in Himes's view, whatever African Americans do, they cannot escape the cycle of racism that controls their lives.

The "Harlem Cycle" crime thrillers describe life among the struggling poor of...