The Heat's On

''The greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler'' Sunday Times

Detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones have lost two criminals. Pinky ran off - but it shouldn''t be hard to track down a giant albino in Harlem. Jake the drug dealer, though, isn''t coming back - he died after Grave Digger punched him in the stomach. And his death might cost them both their badges. Unless they can track down the cause of all this mayhem - like the African with his throat slit and the dog the size of a lion with an open head wound.

Chester Himes''s hardboiled tales of Harlem have a barely contained chaos and a visceral, macabre edge all their own.