What will Ray do next?

 

⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑ Being a fan of Colson Whitehead, I am not entirely certain how Harlem Shuffle passed me by? As it's the first book in the Ray Carney series it would have been wise to start there but I couldn't be put off Crook Manifesto. What a fabulous title! Yes, I would have had greater depth of story/character development had I proceeded in the correct order but enjoyed this novel nonetheless without it.

Crook Manifesto brings Ray Carney into the 70s with all its greed, corruption, violence and hatred. He has been on the right side of the law running his Harlem furniture shop for years and life is pretty good. Until an act of parental generosity leads him off the straight and narrow and back into doing favours for favours and fencing stolen goods. It's fair to say things get out of hand, as they do, and though it is tense for Ray the reader is in for a treat with the grittiness of the 70s described with amazing eloquence. I was sure Colson Whitehead couldn't possibly be old enough to remember the 70s, but I would be wrong. That life experience translates well to the page as the nefarious corruption and criminality of the age feels tangible in his well chosen words. I remember the time and he nails the sense of a broken system that pervaded the era. Bent coppers, dirty politicians, making more money with crime than honest work, strikes, racial tensions, it's all there.

This is a masterful story full of colourful characters making hard choices to get by. I won't make the same mistake again and will be on the lookout for the next book.