Whitehead’s loving ’60s-era homage to noir and NYC
Ray Carney is the kind of outlaw you want to root for because he’s kind, generous, loves his wife and family, and is “only slightly bent when it came to being crooked.” He’s the hard-working, upwardly aspirational anti-hero of “Harlem Shuffle,” Colson Whitehead’s loving homage to noir fiction and nostalgic look at the city that never sleeps in the late 1950s and early ‘60s. The book is among this year’s finalists for the Kirkus Prize.
Unlike his last two books, “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys,” which dealt with the serious social justice themes of slavery and Florida’s segregated juvenile justice system, “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.