February 1, 2023

Furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney returns after the sensational Harlem Shuffle, trying to stay on the straight and narrow and not quite succeeding. In 1971, he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter and approaches old police contact Munson, who wants a favor in return. In 1973, Ray's partner-in-crime, Pepper, takes a side job doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem and manages to best the hustlers he meets. By 1976, while storeowner Ray finds his way around raging bicentennialism, he asks Pepper to help discover who's behind a fire that injured one of Ray's tenants. Again, Whitehead delivers the portrait of one struggling community and roughed-up but durably endearing 1970s New York. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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.

May 1, 2023

Whitehead brings back furniture salesman Ray Carney in this equally ambitious follow-up to Harlem Shuffle, moving the action to the grimy 1970s in a triptych of stories. In the first, Carney, who has gone legit since the events of the first novel, seeks red-hot Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter but soon realizes that the path to Madison Square Garden runs through a corrupt cop. In the second, Carney's associate Pepper works security on a blaxploitation film whose star has gone missing, a darkly amusing story that allows Whitehead to comment on the commodification of Black art. In the final section, set during the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976, Ray and Pepper look for the arsonist who lit up an apartment, introducing a political angle to the novel. As in the first installment of this planned trilogy, Carney lives in a world where everyone is a potential mark and playing it straight is a sucker's game. The real star is Harlem, with troubles that seem more buried than during the tumultuous 1960s but are always a moment's notice from boiling over. VERDICT This isn't the rollicking caper its predecessor was, but it's still a worthy addition to one of the most distinguished oeuvres in modern fiction.--Michael Pucci

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2023
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Whitehead continues his boisterous, incisive saga of late-20th-century Harlem and of a furniture dealer barely keeping his criminal side at bay. The adventures of entrepreneur, family man, and sometime fence Ray Carney, which began with Harlem Shuffle (2021), are carried from the Black Citadel's harried-but-hopeful 1960s of that book to the dismal-and-divided '70s shown here. In the first of three parts, it's 1971, and Carney's business is growing even amid the city's Nixon-era doldrums and the rise of warring militant groups like the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army. Carney barely thinks about sliding back into his more illicit vocation until his teenage daughter, May, starts hankering to see the Jackson 5 perform at Madison Square Garden. And so he decides to look up an old contact named Munson, a seriously bent White NYPD officer and "accomplished fixer," who agrees to get free "up close" seats for the concert if Carney will fence stolen jewelry stuffed in a paper bag. But the job carries far more physical peril than advertised, culminating in a long night's journey into day with Carney getting beaten, robbed, and strong-armed into becoming Munson's reluctant, mostly passive partner in the cop's wanton rampage throughout the city. In the second part, it's 1973, and Pepper, Carney's strong, silent confidant and all-purpose tough guy, is recruited to work security on the set of a blaxploitation epic whose female lead inexplicably goes missing. The third and final part takes place in the bicentennial year of 1976, the nadir of the city's fiscal crisis, marked by widespread fires in vacant buildings in Harlem and elsewhere in New York's poorer neighborhoods. When an 11-year-old boy is seriously injured by a seemingly random firebombing, Carney is moved to ask himself, "What kind of man torches a building with people inside?" He resolves to find out with Pepper's help. What recurs in each of these episodes are vivid depictions of hustlers of varied races and social strata, whether old-hand thieves, crass showbiz types, remorseless killers, or slick politicians on the make with the business elite. Whitehead's gift for sudden, often grotesque eruptions of violence is omnipresent, so much so that you almost feel squeamish to recognize this book for the accomplished, streamlined, and darkly funny comedy of manners it is. If its spirits aren't quite as buoyant as those of Harlem Shuffle, it's because the era it chronicles was depressed in more ways than one. Assuming Whitehead continues chronicling Ray Carney's life and times, things should perk up, or amp up, for the 1980s. It's not just crime fiction at its craftiest, but shrewdly rendered social history.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 1, 2023
Harlem furniture-store owner, family man, and sometimes crook Ray Carney had been keeping it clean. But in 1971, when his daughter begs for tickets to see the Jackson Five, Carney contacts a dirty cop and gets dragged back into the violent underworld. Whitehead continues the ensnaring, ingenious, mordantly funny, and profoundly revelatory crime saga begun in Harlem Shuffle (2021), digging even deeper into the city's corruption, from gang wars to a battle between rival fried-chicken restaurants to alliances among politicians, insurance companies, fixers, and arsonists in the grand racket known as urban renewal. Carney's archly cynical narration alternates with the blunt yet philosophical musings of his cohort Pepper, who tries to abide by his "crook manifesto." Then there's Zippo, shooting scenes for his Blaxploitation flick, Code Name: Nefertiti, at Carney's store and stirring up more trouble. Directing a spectacularly vivid cast that includes motley criminals and Carney's rock-steady wife and sweet kids and nephew, Whitehead tracks various strategies for survival in a city engulfed in fiery chaos. Culminating in 1976, this saturated tale is laced with caustic commentary on everything from the paradoxes Black artists face to the ludicrous commercialization of the Bicentennial. Whitehead captures the menace and the beauty of the city in exhilarating detail within the many-faceted, rollicking plot that propels his second, magnificently vibrant and transcendent Ray Carney novel.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Readers will hunt for any new book by Whitehead, but the newest in his Harlem saga will be sought with particular zeal.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.