A Rage in Harlem

⚖The case for it

Harlem noir at its wildest. Con artists and gangsters swirl around a naive church boy caught in the crossfire. Himes invented a genre and a world.

— the canon

✕The case against

Farce at this velocity flattens people. Jackson stays a dupe for two hundred pages, Imabelle is a prize to be passed around rather than a character, and the violence is slapstick until suddenly it isn't, with acid and razors. Himes's Harlem is electric; his plotting is a runaway hearse.

— the honest librarian