Crook Manifesto, Colson Whitehead’s ninth novel and the sequel to Harlem Shuffle (2021), begins in Harlem in 1971. In need of tickets for his daughter to see a sold-out Jackson 5 concert, Ray Carney, furniture salesman and ex-fence, must dip back into the world of con men and dirty cops he left four years ago. But what begins as a simple deal between Ray and Detective Munson turns into a night of ultraviolence and theft, leaving Ray working crooked once again.

Although packed with enough action to fill a whole novel, this is only the first of three interconnected stories in Crook Manifesto. The second introduces us to Pepper and Zippo, the former a heavy bruiser for hire, ‘an emissary from the ugly side of things’, the latter an