Heats on [Paperback]

Chester B. Himes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1986

From the start, nothing goes fright for Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones. They are disciplined for use of excessive force. Grave Digger is shot and his death announced in a hoax radio bulletin. Bodies pile up faster than Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones can run. Yet, try as they might, they always seem to be one hot step behind the cause of all the mayhem--three million dollars' worth of heroine and a simple albino called Pinky.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

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 fantasia with a hard brilliant core Evening Standard 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 Lethem 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 That he could channel this pain and misery into some of the greatest crime novels ever written is a testament to his skill as a writer and his spirit as a man. If this is the first Chester Himes novel you will read then, believe me, you are in for a treat. -- Noel "Razor" Smith --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

From the start, nothing goes fright for Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones. They are disciplined for use of excessive force. Grave Digger is shot and his death announced in a hoax radio bulletin. Bodies pile up faster than Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones can run. Yet, try as they might, they always seem to be one hot step behind the cause of all the mayhem--three million dollars' worth of heroine and a simple albino called Pinky. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Schocken Books (June 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805282521
• ISBN-13: 978-0805282528
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,203,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars aka : Come Back Charleston Blue, February 5, 2001

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Heat's On (Paperback)

There are a few things you can depend on in Chester Himes's great police procedurals featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones : colorful characters, distinctive dialect, a fierce racial sensibility, and plenty of mayhem. Meanwhile, the stories are pleasantly devoid of the kind of self-analysis and interior monologue which clutter up so much of modern fiction, even crime fiction. The Heat's On is something of an exception. Oh, there's more than enough mayhem and what with a giant albino junkie, a hunchback dwarf, a pony-sized attack dog, a faith healer, and various and sundry other folk about, there's certainly adequate local color.

But when, first, the detectives are suspended for treating the dwarf a tad too roughly (for instance, he dies in custody) and then Digger is shot and reported killed, Cotton Ed lets his slip show a little. He becomes a frenzied dynamo of barely contained brutality as he tears a steaming hot Harlem apart searching for the cache of heroin that led to the whole mess. This is a terrific entry in the series and is particularly interesting for Himes's fearsome hostility towards the drug traffic which was blighting the inner-city even then. His attitude makes for an interesting contrast with the permissive modern attitude of many black leaders, who decry harsh prison sentences for drug dealers. It's awfully hard to see Coffin Ed, Grave Digger, or Chester Himes arguing that pushers are victims of an unjust drug war.

GRADE : A

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars aka : Come Back Charleston Blue, February 5, 2001

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Heat's On (Paperback)

There are a few things you can depend on in Chester Himes's great police procedurals featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones : colorful characters, distinctive dialect, a fierce racial sensibility, and plenty of mayhem. Meanwhile, the stories are pleasantly devoid of the kind of self-analysis and interior monologue which clutter up so much of modern fiction, even crime fiction. The Heat's On is something of an exception. Oh, there's more than enough mayhem and what with a giant albino junkie, a hunchback dwarf, a pony-sized attack dog, a faith healer, and various and sundry other folk about, there's certainly adequate local color.

But when, first, the detectives are suspended for treating the dwarf a tad too roughly (for instance, he dies in custody) and then Digger is shot and reported killed, Cotton Ed lets his slip show a little. He becomes a frenzied dynamo of barely contained brutality as he tears a steaming hot Harlem apart searching for the cache of heroin that led to the whole mess. This is a terrific entry in the series and is particularly interesting for Himes's fearsome hostility towards the drug traffic which was blighting the inner-city even then. His attitude makes for an interesting contrast with the permissive modern attitude of many black leaders, who decry harsh prison sentences for drug dealers. It's awfully hard to see Coffin Ed, Grave Digger, or Chester Himes arguing that pushers are victims of an unjust drug war.

GRADE : A

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not at all what I expected, March 24, 2009

By 

S. Schwartz "romonko" (alberta canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Heat's On (Paperback)

I've never read a Coffin Johnson and Grave Digger Jones story before (don't you just love those names?), so this was not at all what I expected. These books are set in Harlem in the sixties, and Jones and Johnson are black policemen whose turf is the colourful streets of Harlem. Police work was really different then, and certainly what the cops did to finally get their man would not be allowed today, but this book is earthy and real. You can almost feel the heat wave that is taking over Harlem while dead bodies keep piling up around Jones and Johnson. Definitely not for the squeemish or faint of heart this one.