Colson Whitehead is an award-winning author in love with New York City. He was born there, grew up in Manhattan, and after graduating from Harvard, went right back to the city to write. 

He has been given MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, the National Book Award, two Pulitzer Prizes, and is the author of “The Underground Railroad,” a fascinating look at the possibility of an actual train beneath the surface, freeing enslaved people in pre-Civil War America.

In Harlem Shuffle he sticks to reality; almost every reviewer has called it a love letter to Harlem. Set in the 1960’s against the backdrop of a city just on the edge of strikes and protests (although when is New York City not on the edge?), the story zeroes in on a colorful cast of characters that manage to make you laugh and cry simultaneously. Leaving you on the edge of your seat certainly isn’t out of the question either! 

Given Ray Carney’s occupation as furniture salesman and sometimes fence for his cousin Freddie, you can’t help but get caught up in family matters as Ray tries to maintain a respectable facade for his in-laws and wife, while he skates on very thin ice with the crooks Freddie leads him to.

It’s a crime novel, sure, but what crimes and plots these are. Chet the Vet, Miami Joe, Zippo, Detective Munson, Moskowitz the jeweler, Mam Lacey, and Pepper all have a hand in the Hotel Theresa heist, which leads to imaginable consequences in Whitehead’s 1960s Harlem. 

Although I’d love to tell you more about the plot and Ray Carney’s truly inventive way of getting back at the crime bosses making his legitimate life almost unbearable, I’d rather leave you with a passage that evoked summer in a certain area of NYC.

“This first hot spell of the year was a rehearsal for the summer to come. Everyone was a bit rusty but it was coming back, their parts in the symphony and assigned solos. On the corner, two white cops recapped the fire hydrant, cursing. Kids had been running in and out of the spray for days. Threadbare blankets lined fire escapes. The stoops bustled with men in undershirts drinking beer and jiving over the noise from transistor radios… Unseen on the rooftops, the denizens of tar beaches pointed to the lights of bridges and night planes.”