Harlem Shuffle

dial this store blared jazz into the street out of horn loudspeakers, the next store German symphonies, then ragtime, and so on. S & S Electronics, Landy s Top Notch, Steinway the Radio King. Now he was more likely to hear rock and roll, in a desperate lure of the teenage scene, and to find the windows crammed with television sets, the latest wonders from DuMont and Motorola and the rest. Consoles in blond hardwood, the sleek new portable lines, and three-in-one hi-fi combos with picture tube, tuner, and turntable in the same cabinet, smart. What hadn t changed was Carney s meandering sidewalk route around the massive bins and buckets of vacuum tubes, audio transformers, and condensers that drew in tinkerers from all over the tri-state. Any part you need, all makes, all models, reasonable prices.

There was a hole in the air where the Ninth Avenue el used to run. That disappeared thing. His father had taken him here once or twice on one of his mysterious errands, when he was little. Carney still thought he heard the train sometimes, rumbling behind the music and haggling of the street.

Aronowitz hunched over the glass counter, with a loupe screwed into his eye socket, poking one of his gizmos. Mr. Carney. He coughed.

There weren t many white men who called him mister. Downtown, anyway. The first time Carney came to the Row on business, the white clerks pretended not to see him, attending to hobbyists who came in after him. He cleared his throat, he gestured, and remained a black ghost, store after store, accumulating the standard humiliations, until he climbed the black iron steps to Aronowitz & Sons and the proprietor asked, Can I help you, sir? Can I help you as in Can I help you? As opposed to What are you doing here? Ray Carney, in his years, had a handle on the variations.

history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel.  
San Francisco Chronicle

Enthralling, cinematic Whitehead's evocation of early 1960s Harlem strewn with double-crosses and double standards, broken glass and broken dreams is irresistible a valentine to a time and place.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Dazzling exciting and wise.
Walton Muyumba, The Boston Globe

A spectacularly pleasurable read, and while it is, of course, literary, it s also a pure, unapologetic crime-fiction page-turner.  
Los Angeles Times

Harlem Shuffle is a wildly entertaining romp. But as you might expect with this two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur genius, Whitehead also delivers a devastating, historically grounded indictment of the separate and unequal lives of Blacks and whites in mid-20th century New York."
Associated Press

An American master
New York Times Book Review

Two-time Pulitzer winner Whitehead (The Nickel Boys) returns with a sizzling heist novel set in civil rights era Harlem. It s 1959 and Ray Carney has built an unlikely kingdom selling used furniture. A husband, a father, and the son of a man who once worked as muscle for a local crime boss, Carney is only slightly bent when it [comes] to being crooked. But when his cousin Freddie whose stolen goods Carney occasionally fences through his furniture store decides to rob the historic Hotel Theresa, a lethal cast of underworld figures enter Carney s life, among them the mobster Chink Montague, known for his facility with a straight razor ; WWII veteran Pepper; and the murderous, purple-suited Miami Joe, Whitehead s answer to No Country for Old Men s Anton Chigurh. These and other characters force Carney to decide just how bent he wants to be. It s a superlative story, but the most impressive achievement is Whitehead s loving depiction of a Harlem 60 years gone that rustling, keening thing of people and concrete which lands as detailed and vivid as Joyce s Dublin. Don t be surprised if this one wins Whitehead another major award.
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Whitehead adds another genre to an ever-diversifying portfolio with his first crime novel, and it's a corker. Ray Carney owns a furniture store in Harlem. When the novel begins in 1959, he's selling mostly used furniture, struggling to escape the legacy of his criminal father. Living taught you, Ray believes, that you didn't have to live the way you'd been taught. Almost. Ray's ne'erdo-well cousin, Freddie, who's been luring Ray into hot water since childhood ( I didn't mean to get you in trouble, is Freddie's constant refrain) regularly brings Ray the odd piece of jewelry, provenance unknown, which Ray peddles to a dealer downtown, building a stake to invest in his business. There was a natural flow of goods in and out and through people's lives . . . a churn of property, and Ray facilitated that churn. It works until Freddie suggests Ray as a fence for a jewel heist at the Hotel Theresa ( the Waldorf of Harlem ), and suddenly the churn produces a potentially disastrous backwash. Following Ray as his business grows and he delicately balances the crooked and straight sides of his life, Whitehead delivers a portrait of Harlem in the early 60s, culminating with the Harlem Riot of 1964, that is brushed with lovingly etched detail and features a wonderful panoply of characters who spring to full-bodied life, blending joy, humor, and tragedy. A triumph on every level.
Booklist, Starred Review