Return of Harlem saga and a roll of the dice
by Colson Whitehead (Fleet, trade paperback, $38)
Colson Whitehead is a highly acclaimed writer (two Pulitzers and a National Book
Award under his belt) and his novels include coming-of-age stories, literary fiction, magical realism, and a great take on the zombie novel.
With Crook Manifesto, he continues his fun and funky Harlem saga, following up on the 1960s-set Harlem Shuffle.
This time we are in New York of the early to mid- 1970s. As in Harlem Shuffle, at the centre is Ray Carney and his furniture store. Some characters you will recognise and others are new to the continuing story. There is a heist, a search for a missing actress, and arson.
The pulp crime aesthetic seeps through each book, but Whitehead brings a poetic style to this sharp satire of the place and the times. From the Black Liberation Army through Blaxploitation films and into the Bicentennial, he has the plot swagger without losing his knack of opening out characters and skewering politics with incisive sentences.
It’s not necessary to have read the first in the series, but why wouldn’t you? – Adrian Hardingham (Unity Books)
Dice
by Claire Bayliss (Allen & Unwin, trade paperback, $37)
The propulsive, taut writing of Dice threw me right out of my reading slump and enveloped me in the environs of Rotorua District Court alongside the jury of this novel.
Dice deftly weaves together the legal proceedings and shocking details of the case that unfolds before them with the lives of each juror.
The case revolves around four teenage boys who are charged with multiple sexual offences against several young women. Their offences stem from a sex game where the roll of a dice dictates what sexual act the boys will commit and with whom. The case against the boys is complex and the biases of each juror begin to affect each of them and their decision-making.
Bayliss deftly creates jurors who are recognisable as people who could show up in our own stories or in the juror’s seat beside us. This book is urgent and powerful, and remained with me weeks after I’d turned the final page.