Novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and journalist, Chester Himes made his mark as a satirist and as a writer of detective novels. In 1970 John A. Williams maintained that "Himes is perhaps the single greatest naturalistic writer living today." Himes does not moralize. He simply places his characters in an environment and records their actions and reactions. His first five novels were largely autobiographical protest novels. From 1957 to the end of his career he wrote detective novels, set in Harlem and Pinktoes (1961), a ribald satire on black-white relations.

Born 29 July 1909, in Jefferson City, Missouri, the third son of Estelle Bomar Himes and Joseph Sandy Himes, Chester Bomar Himes maintained that nothing was permanent in his life but change. His two older brothers were named Edward and Joseph. The first four years of his life were spent in Jefferson City. During the next nine years, however, he lived in Cleveland, Ohio...