The Crazy Kill

A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel

By: Chester Himes

Narrated by: Dion Graham

Outside the apartment where a wake is going on, the manager of the A&P across the street is robbed. Reverend Short, a storefront preacher addicted to opium and brandy, is watching from a bedroom window in the flat. He leans out too far and falls, but a huge bread basket, sitting outside the bakery below, saves him. Back inside, he says he sees a vision of a dead man. Outside, in the very basket Short landed in, lies the body of Valentine Haines. Who murdered Val? It is up to Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson to find out.

©1959 Chester Himes, copyright renewed 1987 by Lesley Himes (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

“this mystery is full of wonderfully stereotypical characters, portrayed by Dion Graham in a silky voice…Graham’s characterizations of gangsters, preachers, and thieves are energetic and imaginative, especially when the action heats up. This period whodunit is a treat for listeners who enjoy hearing zany characters brought to life with panache.” ( Audiofile)

Wonderful!

_The Crazy Kill_ by Chester Himes receives four stars from me. While I found the detectives had very little to do with this story, I found the story compelling.

I loved the setting, and the characters. It is a window into the past, and into a different culture, and life. I loved that. Everything was well written.

Let me address the comment about the detectives not doing much. The narrator takes us into the lives of the suspects more than I'm used to in a hard boiled mystery. Normally, there we follow the detectives and maybe get a scene or two without the detective. However, Himes takes more time with the suspects and their lives. I feel this offered me the chance to be the detective. Readers always try to figure out the killer. However, I often feel I'm passive in that task as I'm following a sleuth. In this novel, I felt more that i needed to be more engaged with trying to figure out the killer.

The reader: This was an audio book read by Dion Graham. Well he's just excellent. All of his voices are solid. I liked his voice for Johnny; it was a bit misleading, which was fantastic. He's a great reader and I recommend any book by him.

Recommended: Yes, this is a solid mystery, set in an interesting place, during an interesting time. I felt transported back, and I got to learn about Harlem, just a tad.

Crazy Thrill

What did you love best about The Crazy Kill?

I love the writing best about The Crazy Kill. Himes has a superb sense of character, dialogue, and plot. He is a master at crime fiction. Ian Fleming of 007 fame admired his work.

What did you like best about this story?

I love the store front preacher. He kept us guessing whether or not he was an inspired prophet or crazy.

What about Dion Graham’s performance did you like?

Graham gave a masterful performance of numerous characters with Harlem dialects.

Any additional comments?

Listen to this book and the entire series on Audible.

slow start, nice story

the early chapters ledt me discombobulated but once the madness settles a nice storyline develops. The characters are all well-developed and the ending is suspenseful

Every Day is a journey. Need complete rules

Does not take long to get into this story. BAM! Someone is dead at the opening. Heard of the author but never read any of his works. Felt that I had to to expand my cultural understanding. Surely there are some good people in Harlem! The portrayal of homosexuals, thieves, adulteress, jack-legged preachers, jealous lovers, "loose" women, and tough, unorthodoxed black police officers is hallarious and goes a loooong way. While, None of the characters deserve empathy or sympathy, I missed them when the story ended. This is a smooth and comfortable story about an era long ago where the living was not easy. Dion Graham did an excellent job of narration. His smooth, silky voice reminded me of being in a grungy, smokey, jazz club. Black culture noir. It made me feel like I belonged in this story. The relationships among the characters are complicated. Very interactive group. Took awhile for me to figure out who was sleeping with who, who was dirty, who was a victim, and how folks are related to each other. Very little the characters could do but be present when the police came around. They better have had the right responses to the people or life would become messy. All characters seemed to be dirt poor, but each had a hustle which made money. Meeting the characters and learning about them was more interesting than solving the murder of Val. I am going to find another book by this author just spend more time in the era and neighborhood. Along with the detectives, I hope to see some familiar characters.

Elmore Leonard before there was Elmore Leonard

I've only read the first two books in this series but it's already one of my all-time favorite detective series.

The mystery itself, which is fun, is almost beside the point. It's really about getting lost in the rich characters and world of Chester Himes's Harlem.

He has such a tight and clean prose style and he is able to build such vivid atmosphere with it that you almost feel like you can smell the streets or see the characters as they're talking.

If you're looking for crime fiction that is fun, character driven and feels like it comes alive as you read it, you can't do better than this series.

quick and easy who done it

The narrator was great I had no trouble telling when different characters were talking.

As for the story its self its a quick read but overall I thought the story was just okay as soon as the scene was set up very early in the book I figured out who did it and it was pretty easy to see why. I like mysteries but I dont like this style because you never really get to know any of the characters or really care what happens to them

loved it!

I thought that the performance was wonderful especially keeping all the vivid characters alive. got me through some nasty traffic jams.

Great hard boiled mystery story

Yet another great entry in Himes’ Gravedigger and Coffin Ed, Harlem detective series. You know they aren’t playing around with names like those. While perfectly willing to use violence, they do so judiciously. They aren’t brute thugs, rather they are nuanced detectives whose reputation for violence is one of their assets. There’s also their intelligence, street smarts and the fact that they have seen it all. They have informants across Himes’ vivid depiction of the Harlem demi-monde. Junkies, dealers, hustlers , gamblers, strippers populate this Harlem alongside doctors, preachers, musicians, bartenders, cabbies and every other walk of life.

The stories aren’t procedurals. They often spend as much time with the suspects as they do with Coffin Ed & Gravedigger. The characters are well-written, elevating them above stereotypes of their professions. This is a benefit of an insiders view. And we the readers and listeners are the beneficiaries.

I highly recommend this book and series to fans of hard boiled fiction. Or to those looking for a new mystery series.

This is One Crazy Bunch!

How to describe this nutty plot? During a wake in the small hours of the morning, a preacher falls out the window from the third floor apartment and miraculously falls into a basket filled with bread sitting on the sidewalk, a shipment bound for the convenience store it sits in front of. The unharmed preacher makes his way back up to the apartment where the drunken guests are surprised to see him appear at the front door and refuse to believe his story. He invites them to see the bread basket for themselves, but when they all crowd at the window, they find another man laying in the bread, stabbed dead. A police investigation follows, during which all the attendants of the wake are questioned in turn. Of course, all the guests are connected to one another in some way, and most of them have secrets to hide which are revealed in due course, but which one killed Val? Detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are out to find out.

Another fun romp into the 60s Harlem of Chester Himes, where gambling, booze, women, and strange characters are mingled in unique ways. There's plenty of violence in this hardboiled series, but plenty of humour too. I didn't expect this book to be as good as the first one, A Rage in Harlem, especially as read by Samuel L. Jackson, but Dion Graham is a great narrator and the story and narration held their own and definitely made me want to discover the next instalment of the Harlem Cycle.

You can feel the 60s black noir

This author from the 60s writes so vividly you can picture Harlem and feel the street culture. If you are uncomfortable with 60s era stereotype characters, prostitutes and pimps, use of the N word, and profanity like “mother r@per” then this dime store pulp is not for you. As much as I liked the prequel narrated by Samuel L Jackson, I think I like this narrator better. Mr. Graham’s narration is more gritty, and feels better in this crime procedural. My only criticism is that some of his female voices are rather cringeworthy.