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It's 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amid this collective nervous breakdown, furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It's strictly the straight and narrow for him—until he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter, May, and he decides to hit up his old police contact Munson, fixer extraordinaire. But Munson has his own favors to ask of Carney and staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated—and deadly.
1973. The counterculture has created a new generation, the old ways are being overthrown, but there is one constant—Pepper, Carney's endearingly violent partner in crime. It's getting harder to put together a reliable crew for hijackings, heists, and assorted felonies, so Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem. He finds himself in a freaky world of Hollywood stars, up-and-coming comedians, and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters, and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook—to their regret.
1976. Harlem is burning, block by block, while the whole country is gearing up for Bicentennial celebrations. Carney is trying to come up with a July Fourth ad he can live with. ("Two Hundred Years of Getting Away with It!"), while his wife, Elizabeth, is campaigning for her childhood friend, the former assistant D.A. and rising politician Alexander Oakes. When a fire severely injures one of Carney's tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it. Our crooked duo have to battle their way through a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent and the utterly corrupted.
Crook Manifesto is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family. Colson Whitehead's kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 18, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780385694032
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780385694032
- File size: 1435 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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June 5, 2023
Whitehead returns with a colorful if haphazard sequel to Harlem Shuffle involving an interconnected series of misguided capers. In 1971, Harlem furniture dealer Art Carney hits up corrupt cop and fixer Detective Munson for Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter. Munson, in possession of some stolen diamonds, reels Carney back into the fence work he’d recently retired from in exchange for the tickets. The night takes a turn for the worse when Munson forces Carney at gunpoint to help with more dangerous errands, including a stickup of a neighborhood gangster’s poker game. The next and strongest section focuses on Pepper, Carney’s occasional associate in crime, who is moonlighting as hired muscle on a 1973 Blaxploitation film production. When actor Lucinda Cole goes missing, Pepper visits her drug dealer, a dangerous gangster, and others, spilling a fair amount of blood on Lucinda’s behalf. In the final act, Carney hires Pepper to find out who’s setting tenement fires at the same time as redevelopment schemes transform the dilapidated neighborhood. Unfortunately, the momentum is throttled by copious references to events in the previous book, while an explosive climax feels rushed. Still, almost every page has at least one great line (“A man has a hierarchy of crime, of what is morally acceptable and what is not”). There’s fun to be had, but it’s not Whitehead’s best.
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