Ray Carney sells furniture on Harlem's 125th Street and is, in his own accounting, only slightly bent when it comes to being crooked: cash runs short on installment-plan sofas, so when his cousin Freddie turns up with a ring or a necklace of doubtful origin, Carney fences it without asking questions. Then Freddie joins the crew robbing the Hotel Theresa โ the "Waldorf of Harlem" โ and volunteers Carney's services, and the fence's quiet sideline pulls him into a clientele of crooked cops, gangsters, and fixers. Across 1959 to 1964, in three movements, the novel plays Carney the striver against Carney the crook inside a Harlem Whitehead renders block by block โ a crime novel that is also a family saga and a love letter to the neighborhood.
Author: Colson Whitehead ยท Original publisher: Doubleday (New York), 2021
