Himes, Chester (1909-1984), was an African-American writer best known for his detective fiction. Himes wrote 17 novels and many short stories.
Himes was born on July 29, 1909, in Jefferson City, Missouri. In 1928, while living in Cleveland, he was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 20 to 25 years of hard labor in prison. There he began his writing career, publishing short stories that drew upon his own experiences for their grim portrayal of violent and despair-ridden lives. He was paroled in 1936.
Himes lived in California from 1940 to 1953. During this time he published his first three novels, largely autobiographical in style. They are If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Lonely Crusade (1947), and Cast the First Stone (1952). In 1953, he moved to France. There he published For Love of Imabelle (1957). This was the first of nine detective novels about Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, two Black policemen working in the Harlem area of New York City. The best known is Cotton Comes to Harlem (1964). Himes lived in Spain from 1969 until his death in 1984.
Himes’s other notable novels include the satirical Pinktoes (1961) and the experimental A Case of Rape (1964). Sixty of his short stories were gathered as The Collected Stories of Chester Himes (published in 1990, after his death). Himes wrote a two-volume autobiography, The Quality of Hurt (1972) and My Life of Absurdity (1976). He died on Nov. 12, 1984.
