The narrative takes place in the middle of the 20th century, and a key story line involves a heist at the Hotel Theresa (Harlem’s answer to the Hotel Pierre in Midtown, which was in fact robbed in 1972). It’s much more, but the entertainment value alone should ensure it the same kind of popular success that greeted his last two novels, “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys.” It reads like a book whose author thoroughly enjoyed what he was doing. All of these are somehow worked into a rich, wild book that could pass for genre fiction. “Harlem Shuffle” brings Whitehead’s unwavering eloquence - at one point he describes traffic as “honking molasses” - to a mix of city history, niche hangouts, racial stratification, high hopes and low individuals. He has said he may keep Ray going into another book, and it won’t take you long to figure out why. “Sometimes he slipped and his mind went thataway,” Colson Whitehead writes about Ray Carney, the crime-adjacent Harlem furniture salesman at the center of his new novel, “Harlem Shuffle.” Whitehead’s own mind has famously gone thataway through nine other books that don’t much resemble one another, but this time he’s hit upon a setup that will stick.
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