The Heat's On
The Heat's On
Regular price
Checking stock...
Regular price
Checking stock...
Proud to be B-Corp
Our business meets the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. In short, we care about people and the planet.
The feel-good place to buy books
- Free shipping in the US over $15
- Supporting authors with AuthorSHARE
- 100% recyclable packaging
- Proud to be a B Corp – A Business for good
- Sell-back with World of Books - Sell your Books

The Heat's On by Chester Himes
'The greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler' Sunday Times Detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones have lost two criminals. Pinky ran off - but it shouldn't be hard to track down a giant albino in Harlem. Jake the drug dealer, though, isn't coming back - he died after Grave Digger punched him in the stomach. And his death might cost them both their badges. Unless they can track down the cause of all this mayhem - like the African with his throat slit and the dog the size of a lion with an open head wound. Chester Himes's hardboiled tales of Harlem have a barely contained chaos and a visceral, macabre edge all their own.
The greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler * Sunday Times *
Outrageous, shocking, wonderful * New York Times Book Review *
Himes wrote spectacularly successful entertainments, filled with gems of descriptive writing, plots that barely sidestep chaos, characters surreal, grotesque, comic, hip, Harlem recollected as a place that can make you laugh, cry, shudder-- John Edgar Wideman
Chester Himes is one of the towering figures of the black literary tradition. His command of nuances of character and dynamics of plot is preeminent among writers of crime fiction. He is a master craftsman. -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
A fine crime writer of Chandlerian subtlety though in a vein of sheer toughness very much his own * The Times *
Chester Himes is the great lost crime writer, as well a great American dissident novelist per se, and an essential witness to his times. Every one of his beyond-cool Harlem novels is cherished by every reader who finds it. -- Jonathan Letham
Hieronymus Bosch meets Miles Davis * The New York Times *
He belongs with those great demented realists ... whose writing pitilessly exposes the ridiculousness of the human condition -- Will Self
Outrageous, shocking, wonderful * New York Times Book Review *
Himes wrote spectacularly successful entertainments, filled with gems of descriptive writing, plots that barely sidestep chaos, characters surreal, grotesque, comic, hip, Harlem recollected as a place that can make you laugh, cry, shudder-- John Edgar Wideman
Chester Himes is one of the towering figures of the black literary tradition. His command of nuances of character and dynamics of plot is preeminent among writers of crime fiction. He is a master craftsman. -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
A fine crime writer of Chandlerian subtlety though in a vein of sheer toughness very much his own * The Times *
Chester Himes is the great lost crime writer, as well a great American dissident novelist per se, and an essential witness to his times. Every one of his beyond-cool Harlem novels is cherished by every reader who finds it. -- Jonathan Letham
Hieronymus Bosch meets Miles Davis * The New York Times *
He belongs with those great demented realists ... whose writing pitilessly exposes the ridiculousness of the human condition -- Will Self
Chester Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1909 and grew up in Cleveland. Aged 19 he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to 25 years in jail. In jail he began to write short stories, some of which were published in Esquire magazine. Upon release he took a variety of jobs, from working in a California shipyard to journalism to script-writing, while continuing to write fiction. He later moved to Paris where he was commissioned to write the first of his Harlem detective novels, A Rage in Harlem, which won the 1957 Grand Prix du Roman Policier. In 1969 Himes moved to Spain, where he died in 1984.
SKU | Unavailable |
ISBN 13 | 9780241521106 |
ISBN 10 | 0241521106 |
Title | The Heat's On |
Author | Chester Himes |
Series | Penguin Modern Classics |
Condition | Unavailable |
Binding Type | Paperback |
Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
Year published | 2021-03-25 |
Number of pages | 224 |
Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
Note | Unavailable |