Chester Himes was born in Missouri in 1909 and died in Spain in 1984. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and later went to the Ohio State University in Columbus. He was expelled for playing a prank and a couple years later was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to 20-25 years of hard labor at the Ohio Penitentiary. In prison he started writing. His first published story was in 1931. In 1936 he was paroled. He worked as a screen writer in LA but was pushed out because of his race. In the 1950s he moved to France and then in 1969 he moved to Spain where he died from Parkinson’s disease at the age of 75. He wrote some literary types of novels on his own experiences and issues relating to race and his time in prison. But he is mostly known for his hardboiled crime detective series featuring two black detectives operating in Harlem by the names of Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. There were eight entries in the series from 1957 to 1969. All Shot Up was the fourth book in the series.
The basic premise: In 1950s Harlem, a sailor and his girlfriend try and recover their brand-new stolen Cadillac while two detectives try and figure out who, how and why the three men dressed as police, robbed an up-and-coming politician, and left a trail of bodies along the way.
It’s a freezing cold Groundhogs Day on the city streets of Harlem New York. A man stealing a tire witnesses a giant gold Cadillac, hit an old lady crossing the street. The car is driven by a big man with a coonskin hat, a little pimp guy and a woman he thinks he recognizes. They drive off in a hurry. The woman gets up but then is run over by an unmarked police car with two black cops and one white cop inside.
The cops catch up with the Cadillac. They smack the little pimp guy with a blackjack and steal the Cadillac. The man in the coonskin hat is Roman, a hearty sailor who had saved up all his money to buy that Cadillac and he’ll be damned if anyone, even the cops are going to steal it. He and his girlfriend, Sassafras, and the unconscious pimp, Baron take off in the abandoned cop car and chase after.
Back at the police station the phone is ringing off the hook. There has been a shoutout outside a local gay bar and it involves a prominent man in the community who is running for office. The case is given to two black detectives, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones.
This book starts up right away and never lets up. The writing is pulpy and hardboiled with lots of dark humor. Random events occur that you think is just for comic relief but come back later on to weigh in on the plot. An example: the thief stealing the wheels of the car continues his work even after he has seen the lady run over twice. He knows she’s dead and he just witnessed a murder, but he has to grab that last wheel. He gets it off and, in his haste, he is rolling it down the hill. It gets away from him and rolls down the street into two beat cops. He takes off. Later on, while the detectives are looking for a witness, it comes out that the cops who were hit by the tire were too embarrassed to report it. If they had reported it, they would have known earlier on that there was a witness and could have helped solve the case. It wasn’t any grand revelation in the main plot and might not have made a difference, but that Himes made this little event matter was notable. Every character and incident in this is tough and coarse with more going on than what’s on the surface.
Back at the gay bar Coffin Ed and Gravedigger enter the bar to talk to the witnesses. No one wants to talk. They go through the bar one by one and essentially smack the shit out of them. They pull their guns and start shooting, until someone starts talking. The bartender speaks up. Three men in cop uniforms had a shootout with a lone gunman. One of the dead men outside was a drag queen named, Snake Hips. The gunman was a private detective. The man stabbed was Casper Holmes, a local businessman who has an office above the bar. Sometimes he frequents the bar. He was carrying a satchel of money. How did the hoods know he had it? Was it all random?
The main characters, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones reminded me of Denzel Washington’s character in the movie Training Day. They are violent and reckless, doing whatever needs to be done to get answers but unlike Washinton’s character, they aren’t crooked in the sense that they are monetarily profiting from the intimidation. All the people of Harlem refer to them as “the man.” They are of the people but separate. The other cops on the scene refer to them as cowboys. Two big dogs that make everyone they come across tense up when they are around. They are hard ex-military guys from the streets, driving around Harlem in an ice storm at 3am drinking a bottle of bourbon solving murder cases.
There is lots of brutality in this. A man is decapitated (in gory detail!) while driving a motorcycle in a police chase. But there is also humor. After the decapitation the body keeps on driving down the street. Simultaneously, across town, while having a conversation about the man, Sassafras states that he’s cool under pressure, and he won’t lose his head.
The characters are pulpy colorful with lots of great street names like Sassafras, Snake Hips, and Black Beauty, not to mention the main characters ghoulish nicknames of Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. The little pimp guy named Baron is described in a manner that it was hard not to picture Kat Williams. Casper the politician is slimy and crooked, making all kinds of backhanded deals in his quest for power. Roman the sailor is a simple straight man surrounded by crooks but even he stands out as a brute not to mess with.
I’m surprised this came out in 1960. If I had to guess I would have easily said this was a 1970s blaxploitation novel. It’s ahead of its time. There were only a few remarks on racism. The n-word shows up only three times. The first by a white cop. And then again by the same character. Until Coffin Ed threateningly says, “say it one more time,” and dude instantly shuts his mouth. Instead of mother fucker they say mother raper, which, is a hundred times worse. You can’t put the word “fuck” in a book, but the word rape is greenlit. Funny how society chooses what words are apprehensible and what are acceptable, eh? Also, the fact that a few of the characters are gay is never portrayed in a negative light. They just are. And that’s pretty cool.
This is one hell of a great crime book. The setting is dangerous, and the frozen weather just makes it even more bleak. It’s well thought out and all the strands tie up nicely at the end. You root for the main characters but in real life you wouldn’t want to run into them. And that’s how I like my heroes, terrifying.
Video review at the end of this video...
No comments:
Post a Comment