BOOKS: Crook Manifesto: Colson Whitehead

Aug. 5—Colson Whitehead is a double Pulitzer Prize winner for "The Nickel Boys" and "The Underground Railroad."

One is a book about the torment suffered by boys in a Florida juvenile reformatory, written from the perspective of one of the youths. The other is a fantasy tale that imagines the Underground Railroad, a system that secretly transported slaves to freedom, as an actual locomotive and train running underground.

Whitehead has made a career of writing a diverse selection of novels from a story about a modern reporter mixed with the legend of John Henry in "John Henry Days" to a zombie apocalypse in "Zone One."

In "Harlem Shuffle," Whitehead wrote a smart late 1950s to early '60s-era crime caper, set in three segments. He liked the subject matter.

He returns to the characters of "Harlem Shuffle" in the follow-up novel "Crook Manifesto."

It's the early 1970s. Harlem furniture store owner Ray Carney has retired from his life of crime as a fence for stolen goods.

He's forced back into his criminal past when he tries scoring tickets to a Jackson 5 concert for his young daughter. A rogue cop takes him on a violent tour of the city in the Serpico era when corrupt New York City cops were going down.

Like "Harlem Shuffle," "Crook Manifesto" is set in three parts. The second part follows Pepper, a tough who worked criminal enterprises with Carney's father after World War II. Here, he's working security for a blaxploitation film that is suddenly missing its star. Pepper tours the city searching for her.

The third part brings Ray and Pepper together as they seek an arsonist whose fire injured a kid who lives above the furniture store.

Fine writing. Literary panache applied to the crime genre. Good writing is good writing and good storytelling is good storytelling. Thanks to Colson Whitehead for being able to combine the two successfully again and again.