The Crazy Kill by Chester Himes
"The Crazy Kill" is the third novel in Chester Himes’ Harlem Domestic series, known for its exploration of the complex underworld of Harlem. The narrative begins with a seemingly random act of violence—a thief stealing a moneybag—that sets off a series of interconnected events among the vibrant, diverse characters of the community. This initial incident is not merely an isolated crime; rather, it highlights the intricate relationships and dynamics that shape life in Harlem, suggesting that chaos and order coexist within a distinct social framework.
The novel juxtaposes elements of surrealism with a rich, tangible atmosphere, where bizarre occurrences and exaggerated characters embody the spirit of the neighborhood. Through the eyes of detectives Jones and Johnson, the story unfolds in a way that emphasizes the resilience and humor found within the community, even as it tackles darker themes like murder and racketeering. The resolution of the plot relies less on traditional detective work and more on the natural unfolding of events, illuminating the self-sustaining nature of life in Harlem. Himes’ narrative ultimately celebrates the vitality of black life in the face of adversity, conveying both the absurdity and the depth of the experiences within this culturally rich environment.
The Crazy Kill by Chester Himes
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1959
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The Crazy Kill was the third novel in the Harlem Domestic (Serie Noir) series. It is typical of the series in beginning with an apparently inexplicable act of violence that triggers a network of reactions in the intricately interrelated underworld of Harlem. Superficially, the incident seems baffling, an act of random violence generated by the sodden meanness and madness of the streets. Yet the linked reactions suggests it results from the interconnections that bind all these passionate lives together. The outcome reveals that these events are more than the random trails of individual lives; they are part of a system with its own internal code of justice and order. In the end, order is reestablished, and justice prevails—but emphatically not the order imposed from without by the official society and its black agents. Beyond that, the novel draws the reader into a world dense with dramatic personalities and alive in the bright edges of concrete details.
The opening of the novel juxtaposes two scenes in Harlem late on a Saturday night: A thief steals a moneybag from the car of a supermarket manager; a preacher at a wake in a neighboring apartment oversees the theft, leans out the window to see better, and falls out, landing in a shopping cart filled with bread. He recovers, returns to the party—where tempers are already flaring because of various sexual tensions—and accuses a guest who has left of having pushed him out of the window. As he gestures from the window toward the cart, others notice another body lying in it. The body turns out to be that of the brother-in-law of the man who has just succeeded the object of the wake as the local racketeering boss.
Overtly, the novel is concerned with determining who did the murder, how, and why. The writer’s focus, though, is not on the mechanics of the plot but on the world in which it takes place. Obviously, it is a world in which the bizarre is commonplace, the outrageous everyday. People fall out of windows in stop-action sequence; as in a cartoon strip, they perform perfect half-gainers into a providential shopping cart; later, that saved body is replaced with a murdered one. Further, everyone—except for the white supermarket manager and the white police sergeant—fails to note any irony in the passage. It is almost as if surrealism has come to life; or, better, as if these lives have been invested with a special reality. Characters, settings, and atmosphere are all sketched in with the bold outlines of caricature. This oversimplifies Harlem and the quality of life there, to be sure, but it also endows it with life, humor, and love. The language may reduce Harlem to the level of a circus, but the circus is bold, loved, and zestful.
It would be hard to maintain such a precedent-defying opening, and Himes, in fact, does not quite carry it off. The plot takes unusual, baroque turns, and the contorted character relationships twist deviously. Typically, detectives Jones and Johnson do not really solve the mystery. Rather, it solves itself, or the characters who generated it resolve it—which is exactly as it should be in a novel primarily directed toward demonstrating the self-consistency and death-defeating vitality of the black spirit in Harlem.
Bibliography
Fabre, Michel, et al. “Chester Himes: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography.” MELUS 20, no. 3 (Fall, 1995): 137.
Fabre, Michel, and Robert Skinner, eds. Conversations with Chester Himes. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
Himes, Chester. The Autobiography of Chester Himes. 2 vols. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972-1976.
Lundquist, James. Chester Himes. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1976.
Margolies, Edward. “Chester Himes’s Black Comedy: The Genre Is the Message.” In Which Way Did He Go? The Private Eye in Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, and Ross Macdonald. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982.
Margolies, Edward. “Race and Sex: The Novels of Chester Himes.” In Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1968.
Margolies, Edward, and Michael Fabre. The Several Lives of Chester Himes. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.
Milliken, Stephen. Chester Himes: A Critical Appraisal. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1976.
Sallis, James. Chester Himes: A Life. New York: Walker, 2000.
Sallis, James. Difficult Lives: Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Chester Himes. New York: Gryphon, 1993.
Soitos, Stephen F. The Blues Detective: A Study of African-American Detective Fiction. Amherst: University Press of Massachusetts, 1996.