A Rage in Harlem

⚖The case for it

A gullible undertaker’s assistant gets fleeced by a scheme to turn ten-dollar bills into hundreds, and Himes escalates from there. Readers call it “funny as hell. Brilliant. Absurd. Subversive,” with “a large dose of the darkest comedy” riding on violence that should not be funny. Jackson’s twin brother, running a separate con dressed as a nun, steals every scene he is in. The Harlem detail reads as reportage, street by street. The dialogue is among the best hardboiled voice work in the genre. A critic: “an urban police procedural like no other.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The farce undercuts the noir for a vocal minority, with detectives “shooting in the air and shouting slogans” in what reads as “a keystone cops script rather than serious work.” Jackson’s gullibility at the opening breaks believability before the momentum recovers it. The plot is hard to track and the period slang adds friction. The heavier objection is the casting: readers uneasy about “Black folk portrayed as dumb criminals or naive simpletons” question whether the satire earns it, calling it “stereotypical depiction of black people as portrayed in B-movies.”

— the honest librarian

3h

honest hours

4

sittings