From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead, a
gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in
Harlem in the 1960s.
"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked . . ."
To
his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding
salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for
himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their
second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him
or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still
home.
Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods
and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks
in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
Cash is
tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his
cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray
doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown
who doesn't ask questions, either.
Then Freddie falls in with a
crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the "Waldorf of Harlem"—and
volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned;
they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops,
vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted
Harlem lowlifes.
Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the
striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins
to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting
killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while
maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home
furniture needs?
Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays
out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a
family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a
social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to
Harlem.
But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.
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