To his customers and neighbors on 125th street Carney is an upstanding salesman of
reasonably-priced furniture making a life for himself and his family. He and his wife
Elizabeth are expecting their second child and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve
of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks it's still home. Few people
know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks and that his faðcade of normalcy has
more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger and bigger all the time. See cash
is tight especially with all those installment plan sofas so if his cousin Freddie
occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace at the furniture store Ray doesn't see the
need to ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who also doesn't ask
questions. Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa -- the Waldorf
of Harlem -- and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned they
rarely do after all. Now Ray has to cater to a new clienètle one made up of shady cops on the
take vicious minions of the local crime lord and numerous other Harlem lowlifes. Thus begins
the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double
life he starts to see the truth about who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid
getting killed save his cousin and grab his share of the big score all while maintaining his
reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs? Harlem Shuffle is
driven by an ingeniously intricate plot that plays out in a beautifully recreated Harlem of the
early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel a hilarious morality play a
social novel about race and power and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. But mostly it's a
joy to read another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning
Colson Whitehead--
