Blind Man with a Pistol

At once grotesquely comic and unflinchingly violent, Blind Man With a Pistol is the final entry in Chester Himes's trailblazing Harlem Detectives series. New York is sweltering in the summer heat, and Harlem is close to the boiling point. To Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, at times it seems as if the whole world has gone mad. Trying, as always, to keep some kind of peace—their legendary nickel-plated Colts very much in evidence—Coffin Ed and Grave Digger find themselves pursuing two completely different cases through a maze of knifings, beatings, and riots that threaten to tear Harlem apart.