Chester Himes - Critical Reception and Biography

Critical Reception and Biography

Some regard Chester Himes as the literary equal of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Ishmael Reed says " taught me the difference between a black detective and Sherlock Holmes" and it would be more than 30 years until another Black mystery writer, Walter Mosley and his Easy Rawlins and Mouse series, had even a similar effect. Himes was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

In 1996, his widow Lesley Himes went to New York to work with Ed Margolies on the first biographical treatment of Himes's life entitled, “The Several Lives of Chester Himes”, by long-time Himes scholars Edward Margolies and Michel Fabre, published in 1997 by University Press of Mississippi. Later, novelist and Himes scholar James Sallis published a more deeply detailed biography of Himes called Chester Himes: A Life (2000).

A detailed examination of Himes's writing and what has been written about him in both America and Europe can be found in "Chester Himes: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography" compiled by Michel Fabre, Robert E. Skinner, and Lester Sullivan (Greenwood Press, 1992).