Justin Jacobs

There are few things I enjoy more than reading Colson Whitehead. From the first time I read Whitehead talk about his experience playing in the World Series of Poker for Grantland (pours one out), I knew that I had found a kindred soul. The way he talked about poker and the people who played the game had a rhythm and wit that I found captivating.

When his next novel, The Underground Railroad dropped and set the literary world ablaze I was not shocked. One of the most thoughtful writers we have turned his sights on our nation’s history of slavery and racism, and all of that brilliance and intellectual sharpness was on full display. 

The Underground Railroad and his follow-up, The Nickel Boys – a book about the abuse and murder of black children at a reform school in Florida during the 1960 –  both won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Whitehead was now a household name in the literary world. 

Whitehead mentioned in interviews that after working on two books with such heavy subjects, he wanted to jump into something more fun.

In 2021 Harlem Shuffle came out to strong, if not a little muted acclaim. Harlem Shuffle is the story of a man named Ray Carney whose day job is owning a furniture store, but moonlights as a fence for the neighborhood’s thieves and other ne’er-do-wells. The backdrop of the story is the Harlem of the 1960s. Carney’s life is filled with people who have connections to a criminal underworld, and the story explores those relationships to great effect. It’s an awesome read. 

Jump to 2023 and here comes Crook Manifesto, a direct follow up to Harlem Shuffle set in the 70s. This is something new for Whitehead, who up until this point would typically jump from genre-to-genre between books. Now we know that the Ray Carney series is set to be a trilogy, and having just finished Crook Manifesto, I’m delighted to hear it. I feel like this novel takes so much of what Whitehead had learned about the crime epic in Harlem Shuffle, and made something that both stands out from and exemplifies everything I love about crime stories. 

In Crook Manifesto you are presented with a New York City that seems engulfed in flames. While the city’s firefighters are scrambling to keep up with the chaos, everyone else is trying to find a way to get theirs before nothing is left to steal. Carney is doing everything he can to stay on the straight-and-narrow but a chance encounter with a crooked cop, over a pair of tickets to see the Jackson Five, kickstarts a tale of violence and revenge that becomes the catalyst for much of the story.

Whitehead brings back a number of characters from Harlem Shuffle who all have to reckon with the world they are living in. The city’s corruption has seemingly made it all but impossible to lead a normal, straight life. We get to know the people who are setting Harlem ablaze, as well as those bankrolling arson on a city-wide scale. What I love about Crook Manifesto is that you can see and feel the motivations that are driving all the characters. There are no throwaway henchmen in this story, everyone is being driven by the same crooked machinery at the heart of the tale.

You can easily read Crook Manifesto as a straight crime story and have a great time doing so. There’s a propulsion to the action that will have you on the edge of your seat. I’m not one to visibly emote while reading, but I actually gasped at a plot point late in the story that I will not spoil here. Whitehead has really sharpened his ability to tell a great action story. What’s also here are the same big questions we expect out of (Capital L) literature. Can we truly escape our past? Can we trust the institutions that are put in place to protect us? How do we live in a world that seems so cruel and unjust? 

As much as Whitehead may have been trying to escape into genre, he couldn’t help but bring his world with him. What we are left with is something wicked, smart, funny, and true. The New York of Crook Manifesto is constantly evolving. You can never hold it down in your mind. The same seems to be true of the book’s author, who can’t help but upend any genre he steps.  

Churn baby, churn.