Chester Himes
For Love of Imabelle
1957 (1971 reprint, Dell Publishing Co.)
I’m convinced that most crime fiction stories could be re-written as comedies with little to no change to the plot. Both forms find their meat in irony, bad judgement, mismatched lovers, human weakness, and people who go to extremes to get out of trouble. Perhaps most obvious though is that both crime and comedy often involve an unholy mix of two types of characters: idiots and villains.
Put an idiot and a villain together and a powder keg can result. Maybe the villain manipulates the idiot. Maybe the idiot takes on the villain despite being outclassed in craftiness. Maybe the villain IS an idiot, but he’s still smarter than this other lowlife. What happens next might be funny. Or deadly. Or both.
That’s my theory, at least. Don’t test me too hard on it. I haven’t been thinking on it for twenty years. In fact, I didn’t think about it much at all until I read this brilliant, sleazy, violent, and often laugh-out-loud pulp novel from Chester Himes. It’s all about dangerous men, one shady woman, a city full of predators, and one hopeless fool at the center of it all.
Continue reading “FOR LOVE OF IMABELLE (aka A RAGE IN HARLEM) by Chester Himes”