Country:
USA
Genre:
Crime Fiction/Noir
Pages:
156
I will be honest. I bought this book because of the witty and intriguing description on the back...and because it was 4,99$ in the bargain bin over at Chapters. Since then (I always research new writers I buy), I have learned that Chester Himes is the black Dashiell Hammett. He started writing in prison, while serving a sentence for robbery and wrote there If He Hollers, Let Him Go, still considered today as one of his greatest works. After leaving jail, he moved to France to rebuild his life, then to Spain, where he wrote The Big Gold Dream in 1960.
The (very) short novel is one of the nine in the Grave Digger Jones/Coffin Ed Johnson series. The fifth one to be more precise. The action picks up in a lively, over-the-top scene, where Sweet Prophet Brown, a local preacher and criminal sees one of his new followers, Alberta Wright, dropping dead after drinking the water he personally blessed. Her loving husband Rufus gets then the cue to sell all of her furniture to a Jewish gentleman who happens to discover a stash of money in Alberta's possessions. Then he his killed...and his killer is killed...which prompt our two heroes Grave Digger and Coffin Ed into action.
The lean and mean Big Gold Dream becomes even more twisted as Alberta shows up again. She had been poisoned by the blessed water, but she wasn't dead. The two detective are trying to trail the money to stop the violence at the core, but Alberta doesn't cooperate. All she wants is to protect the new light of her life, the prophet. The bodies are piling up and the two enforcers are over their head, trying to unveil the mystery. Oh and did I mention? This all happens over 24 hours....
In your usual novel series you can pick one up (no matter which one in the lot) and read it independently from the other. The Big Gold Dream doesn't work like that. It's too short to get a good grasp on the Harlem Detectives universe through he reading of a single novel. The In-Media-Res start is leaving any kind of characterization out of the story and more important, the complexity of the events leave the two main protagonists out of the novel for most of it.
The structure of The Big Gold Dream is complex enough, but certainly not developed and tense enough to make for a stand-alone novel. The pages are crammed full of action with little space for understanding what's going on. You hang on and try to follow the Harlem Detectives train as closely as you can. Chester Himes style is indeed close to the bare, raw approach of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but he lacks in overall vision in plotting. He knows what he wants to do, where he wants to lead us, but he doesn't know how to present it. As least, not in The Big Gold Dream.
A huge cast of characters, each and every one with their small promises and twisted and complex plot that should have taken 400 pages on his own, contribute to drain the interest from an intriguing novel that sets a rythmn that not much writers can keep. Chester Himes is a worthy writer, but if you want to get into Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, start at the beginning, with A Rage In Harlem. It might save you confusion and disappointment.
Score: 68%
