“From then on whenever he heard the song he thought of the death of Munson. It was the Jackson 5 after all who put Ray Carney back in the game following four years on the straight and narrow. The straight and narrow - it described a philosophy and a territory, a neighborhood with borders and local customs.”
That’s the opening to Colton Whitehead’s novel Crook Manifesto. The narrator is Ray Carney, a Harlem furniture store owner and ex-fence for stolen goods. When the only one who can get Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter is the crooked cop Munson, Ray finds himself back in the fence business and this time it becomes deadly.
Two years later, in 1973, the story revolves around Pepper, Carney’s violent partner in crime. Pepper takes a job as security for a low budget film being shot in Harlem. When the star goes missing it’s his job to find her. Then, in 1976, as the country is gearing up for the bicentennial, Carney employs Pepper to find out who started a fire in a building that sent a child to the hospital. Unfortunately, some of the evidence points to the politician for whom Carney’s wife is campaigning.
I chose this book because for some time I’ve wanted to read something by Whitehead, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. As someone who grew up in white middle class America, the setting of this book is very foreign to me. My grandparents lived in a high rise in the Bronx and a house on Long Island. Whitehead is a very gifted writer who brings to life the people and places of the time period. As the book jacket says this book “is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family.”
If you’re looking for a well-written book that brings to life Harlem in the 1970’s, then you must read Crook Manifesto by Colton Whitehead.
