I shd really create a bkshelf called "crime fiction" & get rid of "mysteries" since most of what I call "mysteries" here are more appropriately called the former. That's the case here. Himes is yet-another author I've known about for a long time w/o ever having gotten around to reading until now. This bk is copyrighted 1969 & reading it falls conveniently on the heels of my listening to a record of an Eldridge Cleaver speech at Syracuse Univ in 1968. Why convenient? B/c Cleaver was a black radical in his prime in 1968 & Himes' bk has as its main background black social unrest & rioting around the same time.

The foreword:

""Motherfucking right, it's confusing; it's a gas, baby, you dig."

A Harlem intellectual"

Cleaver's record is called "Dig" & in his speech he explains the use of "motherfucker". &, yes, I'd call Cleaver an intellectual too.

ANYWAY, I'd almost rank Himes w/ Hammett & Chandler as a crime fiction writer but I want to read more by him before I go that far. This was a good start for me. Himes' preface explains the title of the bk:

"A friend of mine, Phil Lomax, told me this story about a blind man with a pistol shooting at a man who slapped him on a subway train and killing an innocent bystander [..:] and thought further that all unorganized violence is like a blind man with a pistol."

Himes' bk is a collection of portraits in Harlem, NYC. It's tied together by the 2 main characters, 2 black police detectives, trying to solve crimes that the reader is privy to the solution of but that the detectives are prevented from learning much about. & Himes uses this context as a way of introducing social commentary - esp from the detectives mouths when they talk w/ their lieutenant:

""All right, all right! I take it you know who started the riot."

"Some folks call him by one name, some another," Coffin Ed said.

"Some call him lack of respect for law and order, some lack of opportunity, some the teachings of the Bible, some the sins of their fathers," Grave Digger expounded. "Some call him ignorance, some poverty, some rebellion. Me and Ed look at him with compassion. We're victims."

"Victims of what?" Anderson asked foolishly.

"Victims of your skin," Coffin Ed shouted brutally"

At any rate, Himes is hardly an oversimplifier - he casts a cynical eye on almost all he sees - but I'd have to say it's mostly a fair one. ( )

uh....I have no idea what I just read and I feel like I dropped acid. ( )

La imagen de un ciego con una pistola es sinónimo de caos. De eso va esta novela. No se trata tanto de solucionar crímenes, aunque hay unos cuantos, sino de reflejar un ambiente en el que Harlem está descontrolado y nadie sabe lo que puede pasar. Ni siquiera el lector, y por momentos tampoco los personajes, están seguros de qué es lo que se está buscando. En medio de la casi anarquía, la gente sigue viviendo y los dos policías buenos intentan buscar un sentido a las cosas rodeados del racismo, la miseria y las mafias. Desconcierta un poco al que, como yo, esperaba una novela policiaca, pero, si uno la deja reposar un poco, resulta una gran novela. ( )

Good, but this one felt a bit more disjointed. ( )

3.5 stars
Two Harlem cops are following two cases in Harlem at a time of racial tension and outbreak of riots and demonstration. The characters are odd and mostly corrupt or powerless police (with the exception of the two protagonists, two African American detectives whose beat is Harlem), prostitutes, criminals, some strange cultist types, etc. Characters are not really well developed and this is more driven by the cases and the stories about the riots.

Amazon described this as grotesquely comic and unflinchingly violent so I was pretty sure I was going to hate it. I did not hate it, there were parts that were entertaining and within the story there was some interesting commentary about race relationships in the North East. I liked the two detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger. There were definitely several very graphic descriptions of the violence and some very vivid imagery that I could have done without. There was something oddly engaging about the book but I can’t quite describe what I liked – this is normally not the type of book I would enjoy. The main problem for me was that I was so confused half the time that I didn’t know what was going on. Lots of characters, many fairly similar and thus I had a hard time following who did what and how everything was connected. I am not sure if this was me (reading too many books right now) or the book.
( )