A review by deegee24
A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes

4.0

A carefully written, tongue-in-cheek social satire in the form of a hardboiled crime novel. Hines introduces his Black detectives, Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones, but they are secondary characters. The two main characters are Jackson and Imabelle. The book isn't really plot-driven and the crime caper is very simple and made known to the reader early on. The main mystery at the heart of the book is how to read Imabelle: is she sincere in returning Jackson's love or is she the stereotypical, backstabbing femme fatale of the hardboiled genre? Leaving this open to interpretation at the end was a stroke of genius.