Blind Man with a Pistol — Chester Himes

At once grotesquely comic and unflinchingly violent: the final entry in the trailblazing Harlem Detectives series, set in New York in the sweltering summer heat.

“A sensual, surreal, cartoonishly violent and breathtakingly bawdy comic universe.” -- Los Angeles Times

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.