[2] Their protagonists are two black NYPD detectives (whose origins can be traced to a short story Himes published (1933) in Abbott's Monthly Magazine)[3] — Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson — whose names suggest the nature of their police methods and reputation.
Jones and Johnson generally go easy with, and even tolerate, numbers operators, madames, whores, and gamblers; but they are extremely hostile to violent criminals, drug dealers, confidence tricksters and pimps.
For example, in the throat-cutting incident, the woman was a key witness in a case where a young girl was being held hostage and threatened with death by a street gang, and Himes says of Grave Digger's actions: "He knew what he had done was unforgivable, but he couldn't stand any more lies".
Jones and Johnson get away with these methods because they manage to solve high-profile cases under great pressure and because the victims of their brutality always either get killed off by other criminals, or are found to be implicated in serious crimes themselves.
There is abundant, and very effective, use of "black" (i.e., macabre) humor to lighten the mood of the stories, and they also contain many interesting sidelights touching on subjects as diverse as political corruption, jazz, soul food, and the sexual underside of Harlem life in that era.