A Case of Rape

Description

From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a brilliant, short novel about four black men in Paris wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering a white woman

In spare, dispassionate prose with all the austerity of a deposition, A Case of Rape chronicles a tragic miscarriage of justice. The facts of the case are this: Mrs. Elizabeth Hancock Brissard, a white woman, accompanied Mr. Scott Hamilton, a Black American man, to his hotel room in Paris’s Latin Quarter at three in the afternoon on Sunday, September 8th. They had had an affair previously, but things had ended well. In fact, they were working on a novel together. The intention of their meeting was to discuss it, and they were joined by three other Black American men: Caesar Gee, Theodore Elkins, and Sheldon Edward Russell.

About three hours later a French couple witnessed the four men attempting to push her out the window, and some time after that, she was found dead. The eventual trial was summary. Its verdict was indeed a foregone conclusion. But was it true?

A riveting mystery but also a mordant critique of racism and sexism, A Case of Rape is the fable-like story of doomed love and justice.Chester Himes began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery from 1929 to 1936. From his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Himes dealt with the social and psychological repercussions of being black in a white-dominated society. Beginning in 1953, Himes moved to Europe, where he met and was strongly influenced by Richard Wright. It was in France that he began his best-known series of crime novels—including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965)—featuring two Harlem policemen. As with Himes’s earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humor. He died in Spain in 1984.US

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