Crook Manifesto

Ray Carney owns a furniture store in Harlem, occasionally supplementing his income by dealing in stolen goods. Some of these capers were the subject of Colson Whitehead’s previous novel, Harlem Shuffle. Following those events, Carney retired from the stolen goods trade; when Crook Manifesto opens in the 1970s, Carney has spent four years building the furniture business into a local success story. But when his daughter begs for tickets to see the Jackson 5 in Madison Square Garden, Carney sees only one way to make that happen.

As Carney reconnects with some of his old cronies, readers are reunited with colorful characters from Carney’s past, and taken on a wild ride through various illicit and illegal dealings. Like Harlem Shuffle, show more the story is told in three parts, each set a few years apart. While Carney is the thread tying it all together, in Crook Manifesto other key figures are given center stage. We see more of Carney’s wife Elizabeth, who has a career of her own and is largely unaware of Carney’s side hustle. And then there’s Pepper, who once worked for Carney’s father, and can be counted on when muscle is most needed.

At first glance, Crook Manifesto appears to be a novel about alliances, betrayals, and car chases, But Colson Whitehead uses these stories to demonstrate the challenges Harlem residents face every single day. People are just trying to get by, but are often held back by poor living conditions, low educational attainment, and limited job prospects. The city fails them at nearly every opportunity, as both government and law enforcement are seduced by corruption that lines their pockets. Occasionally these individuals pay a price for their misdeeds, but there’s always someone right behind them to keep the system running. show less

I find myself once again playing the dubious role of literary outlier. “Crook Manifesto” has generally received rave reviews. I had high expectations and nudged it up my “to read” list. Candidly, I was disappointed. Make no mistake, Whitehead’s wordsmith talents are exceptional. His latest work paints a vivid portrait of New York City’s crime underbelly in the 1970s. My problem involves the storyline and structure. A critique in the Atlantic summarized my issue with precision, noting that after the first crime escapade, the book “begins to read less like a novel and more like an anthology of glancingly related anecdotes. This development draws more attention to the third-person narrator, who assumes an outsize presence.” show more I concur. Also, there were so many characters introduced that few felt fully developed. Add to the mix the fact that crime fiction isn’t among my favorite genres and it all equates to a mediocre star tally. show less

When I reviewed Harlem Shuffle, I wrote, "Even more Pepper would have made for a better story." Well, there's more Pepper here, and I was right. Overall, this is a much better book than Harlem Shuffle. Actually, it's more like three books, since the three parts take place from 1971 - 1976 and are only related by some of the characters in them. It's nice to see what has become of Ray Carney and his family. Carney has stopped his criminal activities as the book starts, but that doesn't last for long as he becomes involved with corrupt detective Munson, who is in deep trouble now that the Knapp Commission is seriously investigating corruption in the NYPD. Munson has a desperate plan, and Carney is caught right in the middle of it. The show more disintegrating detective's dialogue is great, as is the dialogue throughout the book. The second story is a bit lighter--a filmmaker is using Carney's store as part of the set for a blaxploitation picture, which gives Whitehead room to comment on lots of things (such as Blacula). But there's a dark side here as well. Finally, the last third of the book sees Carney take an interest in finding out who has torched a building where a child was hurt. This leads down a dark path he couldn't have imagined and to a series of climaxes that are very well done. Whitehead can just plain write, and this book is probably the most fun of his books I have read. Or actually, listened to in this case. As he did for Harlem Shuffle, Dion Graham gives a superb performance. Highly highly recommended. show less

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead is the the second in the Ray Carney Harlem Saga.it is divided into three loosely interconnected novellas all set in Harlem a few years apart in the ‘70s.

1971 - Ray Carney owns a furniture store and has given up his life of crime…mostly. But when his daughter wants to see the Jackson 5, he gets in touch with an old contact in search of tickets and soon finds himself caught up in a whole world of trouble.

1973 - Times have changed and crime just ain’t what it used to be so Pepper, Carney’s dad’s old partner, has taken a security job on the set of a Blaxploitation film. When the leading lady goes missing, it is up to Pepper to find her.

1976 - As the country gets set for the Bicentennial show more celebration, someone is setting Harlem on fire. When the son of one of his tenants is injured in one of these fires, Carney hires Pepper to find the arsonist responsible.

I have to admit I have not read Harlem Shuffle, the first book in the series but it didn’t interfere with my enjoyment of Crooked Manifesto. And I did enjoy it a lot. By dividing the book into three parts, Whitehead shows the changes that affected New York and specifically Harlem during the ‘70s culturally as well as economically, politically, and generationally. The book is well-written and as always, Whitehead infuses the stories with a sly sense of black humour while never glossing over the hardships and struggles of his main characters making the reader root for them regardless of their actions. Overall, a very compelling read and one of my favourites so far this year.

I received an arc of this book from Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review show less

The rating that I've given "Crook Manifesto" might be a bit deceptive: I know that the book has flaws, but I enjoyed it as if had been a five-star banger. What can I say? I like reading Colson Whitehead, and I'm curiously fond of the Harlem Saga's Ray Carney, a good man who isn't above committing the occasional crime.

The thing about "Crook Manifesto" is that everyone's out there committing crimes in this one. In "Harlem Shuffle", most of the real action was relegated to the past, to Ray's no-good dad and his drinking buddies. But in this book, street crime is out of control, there are junkies everywhere, arsonists are burning down whole neighborhoods, and crooked real estate developers are taking advantage. There's a certain kind of show more cultural consumer who likes stories drawn from New York City's most troubled time periods — you know, the sort of person who's seen "The Warriors" more than enough times — and this will be right in their wheelhouse. But Ray Carney is still trying to make it for real, and while Whitehead gets late sixties/early seventies black fashion gloriously right, he doesn't often glamorize the transformation that Ray is witnessing here. "Crook Manifesto" is a portrait of wholesale moral rot that encompasses every level of society, from street-level hoods to community leaders. There's just no escaping the fact that during the period in which "Crook Manifesto" is set living in New York was rough, dangerous, and frequently unpleasant. Ray Carney, of course was always too smart to believe every story that the big shots in the black business community wanted to sell him, but I always felt that he believed that he'd one day get out of the game for good. Actually, at the novel's opening, he hasn't visited his criminal connections in quite some time. At the end of this one, though, things seem so bleak that one wonders if escape's possible, or, indeed, if Ray will ever think it is again. This sad fact is underlined by the introduction of Pepper, Ray Carney's unofficial uncle who was once an associate of his father. Frequently violent and rather vacuous, Pepper's not a pleasant character, but the fact that he seems much more comfortable than Ray does throughout most of the novel tells us something important about the time and place in which it's set. "Crook Manifesto" can be a simultaneous disheartening and supremely entertaining read: a genuinely disquieting reading experience.

The real problem with "Crook Manifesto" is its pacing, or, rather, the fact that it hums along beautifully without the sort of dramatic structure that a really great novel needs. It has an ending that almost broke my heart, but I can't say I didn't see it coming from far away. It reads a book like a second act, and while that didn't make me enjoy it any less, well, it makes me wonder how Whitehead will wrap things up in this trilogy's final book. Recommended to anyone who loved "Harlem Shuffle" and, well, to anyone else. I love Whitehead's writing too much to not recommend that you go grab this one. show less

"Crooked stays crooked and bent hates straight. The rest is survival."
This was an enjoyable sequel to Harlem Shuffle which in truth should be read in order to enjoy the full picture of Ray Carney, the furniture salesman and part time fence, living in Harlem in the 60's and 70's.
"Churn. Carney’s word for the circulation of goods in his illicit sphere, the dance of TVs and diadems and toasters from one owner to the next, floating in and out of people’s lives on breezes and gusts of cash and criminal industry".
This book has three time frames from 71 to the bicentennial of 76. The three vignettes revolve around missions: 1st- Carney trying to get Jackson Five tickets for his daughter May; 2nd- his criminal buddy Pepper trying to find show more the missing actress, Lucretia Cole,( "She had an hourglass figure, not in its shape but in the melancholy reminder that time is running short and there are things on this Earth you’ll never experience"),who was playing the lead in a " blaxploitation" movie filmed in Harlem; and 3rd- investigating the arson of a building where Carney's tenant, a young boy, was injured. Throughout these adventures Carney remains the family man whose crooked side has its own code. "What else was an ongoing criminal enterprise complicated by periodic violence for, but to make your wife happy?" Pepper remains one of the best criminal enforcers ever depicted in literature: "There was no hiding Pepper’s personality, which was December when the days got shorter and shorter: cold and relentless. Inevitable. He didn’t like Christmas trees, or babies, or owing anybody anything. Any smile that broke out on his face was a mutiny swiftly put down. He was not there to present you with an oversized check from the sweepstakes company or a dinner invitation from Raquel Welch. Pepper was an emissary from the ugly side of things, to remind you how close it was."
In addition Harlem itself is a crooked character riddled with corruption, graft, arson, blackmail- you get the picture.
"It was a glorious June morning. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the ambulances were screaming, and the daylight falling on last night’s crime scenes made the blood twinkle like dew in a green heaven."
Just highlighting the following lines made me appreciate how great a writer Colson Whitehead is. Can't wait for the third part of this trilogy to land. Highly recommend pretty much all his works.

Lines:
A reliable subset of his clientele consisted of old men splurging on simple things they had long denied themselves.

Slick was an asset in the sales game. He was only twenty-one but had lived many lives, even if Carney suspected he had emerged full grown from a vat of Harlem Cool five minutes before he first laid eyes on him.

Business, orderly business, unfolded inside the walls of Carney’s Furniture, but out on the street it was Harlem rules: rowdy, unpredictable, more trifling than a loser uncle.

When they first met, Munson had been stout and solidly built, one of those cops you think twice about starting with. The detective had softened over the years as he availed himself of the myriad perks of his job, the steaks on the house and the free rounds. Lumpy, like an army bag full of soiled laundry that had sprouted legs. Now he’d shed some of that bulk and looked harrowed, slimmed down in a way that you’d mistake for an exercise regimen if you didn’t know it was from running from something that was gaining on him.

Webb’s natural tint was a fish-belly white that turned completely scarlet when he got angry, like a lizard on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

They called him Corky because his older brother tried to drown him in the creek when he was five, but he “kept floating up.” His longevity in hazardous trades reaffirmed the nickname.

He couldn’t remember the name of the band, but A Bunch of Squirrels in a Burlap Sack Being Beaten by Hammers would not have been false advertising.

A finisher put a building out of its misery, he said. The owner’s at the end of his rope—taxes up to here, junkies taking over—so he sells the building to the finisher, who strips out the wiring, the plumbing, anything worth a buck, and then torches the joint for the jacked-up insurance policy.

Pepper was an emissary from the ugly side of things, to remind you how close it was.

The wind overnight had swept out the humidity and the clouds made the city seem like it was wrapped in a bum’s dingy overcoat.

A man should have a safe big enough to hold his secrets. Bigger, even, so you have room to grow. show less

It took me quite a while to get into this book. It is dense with events - crime mostly - and seemed a never-ending list of them. But halfway through, it made more sense and even moved into the wonderful category.

The story continues from Harlem Shuffle but can be read as a stand alone. We meet Ray Carney again in 1971, the furniture store owner who is now successful and trying to go straight in a crime-ridden, violent and corrupt city. The trouble with being a family man is that you want to please your family and so when your daughter asks for tickets to a Jackson 5 concert that has sold out, what can you do? Well, move back over the line and become a crook again, but this has consequences.

Crooked stays crooked and bent hates straight. show more The rest is survival.
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This leads Carney to a corrupt cop, Munson and from there to ever bigger crimes and trouble, not unlike a noir where the killer goes on a spree.

Jump forward a few years and we are in 1973 and Carney's store is being used as a set for a blaxploitation film and this brings crime through financers, drugs and security needed on set. When the leading lady goes missing, Pepper is tasked with finding her and the trail he leaves in doing so is quite devastating. Here the idea of a crook having a set of ethics is set

The third and last section or novella is set in 1976 when the city is going up in flames - arson is the leading crime and everyone is in on the act: insurance companies; lawyers and their firms, landlords and tenants. It is a way out of troubles and into money and here we get an impassioned speech about how the city has come to sink this low. Carney believes that it isn't arson but shitty urban planning that is biting them in the ass. It's about cutbacks, moving people, making their living spaces smaller, knocking down factories and places of work, closing local fire stations and the homeless moving into empty buildings. In fact it is an unwritten policy of the city that it is cheaper to burn a place down than renovate or improve for the people. And, of course this all affects those with the least power to stop it, the least wealthy communities and those with people of colour. And this is really what this book is all about. Those who benefit, the politicians, planners, developers and financers, make profits from poverty whilst the city spirals down into the sewers.

What drives Carney to seek out those who burnt down a local building is the fact that an 11year old boy was caught in the fire.

What put the Ruiz boy in the hospital - the fire or everything that made the building empty in the first place?
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The book is quite remarkable. The three novellas, or what feel like episodes in a TV series, chart the changes in crime and the deterioration of the city with Carney holding still as a fence and a crook whilst all around goes to the dogs. Or as Whitehead puts it, it feels like the city is 'wrapped in a bum's dingy overcoat.' It has moments of noir and moments when it is a hard-boiled crime novel 'trouble was making good time to his front steps but he beat it by twenty minutes' but there are also motifs that are more unusual. For instance, the furniture.

I wondered why these books were set in a furniture store but of course it gives you the persepective of looking out onto a city, where people pass by, where you can watch from safety and also can be used as a front. The furniture also suggests class, wealth and social mobility: the DeMarco leather sofa, the birch Egon coffee table, the Sterling expandable dining table the anchor piece of their 1976 Glamorous Living line and let's not forget the recliners. And, it's also funny.

Each episode also has a word woven into the story. So for 1971 it is ringolevio, a tag game with teams and a jail where you need to place the opposition. It goes on and on, no time limits and I suppose life in Harlem at this time must have felt very like this game. In the second episode ghosts are mentioned but I didn't pick up on it as much as the words in the first, and in the third there is the rock that Manhattan is built on, the schist.

1976 is the bicentennial of the city but in Carney's eyes a hunk of rock has more history. The book details how the city, and this rock, shapes people - not because they are lazy or criminal but because of the policies enacted by those who were supposed to be helping the population to improve their lives.

The apartment on 127th Street, the madness of Harlem, the white world and its quick, mean hands - he'd had to grow a concrete skin for a concrete city. Not concrete, something harder, like schist.
p296

The city had tried to break him. It didn't work. He was genuine Manhattan schist and that don't break easy.
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We are left set up for the third in this series of books. Suggestions of Elizabeth, Carney's wife, opening her own travel agency and of course the 1980s. Another time when the city sank into its own sewers aided and abetted by the greed of the rich. show less