The Lost Episode, Episode 6: "The Real Cool Killers" is now available.
In "Killers" we enter the crazy world of mid-20th century Harlem.
Chester Himes’ relationship with his Harlem stories was complex, but in the end he felt he could only write them for his own people. He changed the landscape of crime fiction.
A revolutionary African-American writer, Chester Himes not only influenced 20th century literature, but the Black Power movement as well.
Simply by chance we released this episode during Black History Month and on the day we remember the death of Malcolm X. (Chester Himes and Malcolm X considered each other friends.)
I hope Chester would approve. Rest in Power.
5 Round Burst Books Reviewed in Episode 6 “The Real Cool Killers”
The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald
Nobody Move by Denis Johnson
Cop Hater by Ed McBain
Send my Love and a Molotov Cocktail
edited by Gary Phillips and Andrea Gibbons
How to Steal the Mona Lisa by Taylor Bayouth
Show Notes
Chester B. Himes: A Biography
by Lawrence P. Jackson, Hardcover, 606 pages
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539487052/new-chester-himes-biography-reveals-a-life-as-wild-as-any-detective-story
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/HIMES/himes-chester_BIO.html
http://www.mysanantonio.com/lifestyle/article/Book-review-Chester-Himes-bio-illuminating-11739701.php
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hbf/himes.html
John Reilly writes: “The story takes place in the context of white society where the appearance of catergorial reason is a chief value rather than in Black Harlem where unexpected slapstick physical action is the bjective correclative of the disorder induced by racial oppression.”
In a piece in The Guardian written by John Dugdale, several crime writers reflect on the realism in crime fiction.
"Your first duty is the story," said the writer Mark Billingham. "It’s not realism, it’s heightened. If you wrote realistic crime novels, they’d be a thousand pages long and crushingly dull."
Find episode on itunes