Cotton Comes to Harlem

Black flim-flam man Deke O'Hara is no sooner out of Atlanta's state penitentiary than he's back on the streets working the scam of a lifetime. As sponsor of the Back-to-Africa movement he's counting on a big Harlem rally to produce a massive collection--for his own private charity. But the take ($87,000) is hijacked by white gunmen and hidden in a bale of cotton that suddenly everyone wants to get his hands on. As NYPD detectives "Coffin Ed" Johnson and "Grave Digger" Jones piece together the complexity of the scheme, we are treated to Chester Himes's brand of hard-boiled crime fiction at its best.