SOURCE: Skinner, Robert E. “Streets of Fear: The Los Angeles Novels of Chester Himes.” In Los Angeles in Fiction: A Collection of Essays: From James M. Cain to Walter Mosley, pp. 227-38. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Skinner analyzes two early Himes novels, If He Hollers Let Him Go and Lonely Crusade, comparing them to the works of such Los Angeles writers as James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler.

The most aptly-titled of the stories Chester Himes wrote about life and crime in Harlem is the one called Run, Man, Run.¹ In this terrifying noir tale, the protagonist, Jimmy Johnson, is the sole witness to the senseless murder of two of his co-workers by a drunken, psychotic white cop. The police refuse to take the word of a black man over that of a cop, and the rest of the novel chronicles Johnson's...