Plan B

$9.99 US
Knopf | Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
On sale Feb 13, 2024 | 9780593686140
Sales rights: US, Opn Mkt (no CAN)
The final, posthumous installment of the ground-breaking Harlem Detectives series: a novel of explosive, apocalyptic violence, and a startling vision of the effects of racism in America

Tomsson Black is a revolutionary planning to overthrow white society. Generation after generation of Tomsson’s family have faced insidious, racist persecution, and Tomsson’s own experience has been no exception. But he was born a fighter, and he’s taking matters into his own hands with a final, cataclysmic act of vengeance.

Around the time that acclaimed author Chester Himes died in 1984, it was rumored that another Harlem Detectives novel existed, one that remained unfinished. When the manuscript was found, edited, and published first in France, it was widely regarded as a masterwork. Completed from the author’s notes by two editors, Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner, who also introduce this edition, Plan B is an excoriating statement about the deep, corrosive effects of racism and an apocalyptic vision of Black rebellion that thrusts Himes’s cherished detectives directly into the fray.
Praise for Chester Himes's Harlem Detectives series

“One of the most important American writers of the twentieth century. . . . A quirky American genius.” —Walter Mosley

“His implacable drive to examine the Black experience, the disingenuous nature of the American Dream, the reality of pain and sorrow and what it does to the soul, that is what makes [Himes] the bard of the existential African American psyche.” —S. A. Cosby

About

The final, posthumous installment of the ground-breaking Harlem Detectives series: a novel of explosive, apocalyptic violence, and a startling vision of the effects of racism in America

Tomsson Black is a revolutionary planning to overthrow white society. Generation after generation of Tomsson’s family have faced insidious, racist persecution, and Tomsson’s own experience has been no exception. But he was born a fighter, and he’s taking matters into his own hands with a final, cataclysmic act of vengeance.

Around the time that acclaimed author Chester Himes died in 1984, it was rumored that another Harlem Detectives novel existed, one that remained unfinished. When the manuscript was found, edited, and published first in France, it was widely regarded as a masterwork. Completed from the author’s notes by two editors, Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner, who also introduce this edition, Plan B is an excoriating statement about the deep, corrosive effects of racism and an apocalyptic vision of Black rebellion that thrusts Himes’s cherished detectives directly into the fray.

Praise

Praise for Chester Himes's Harlem Detectives series

“One of the most important American writers of the twentieth century. . . . A quirky American genius.” —Walter Mosley

“His implacable drive to examine the Black experience, the disingenuous nature of the American Dream, the reality of pain and sorrow and what it does to the soul, that is what makes [Himes] the bard of the existential African American psyche.” —S. A. Cosby