Pros and Cons

Colson Whitehead's latest novel is proof that good things come in threes. The acclaimed writer may not have followed up his two Pulitzer Prize-winning books The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys with another weighty offering of fact-based fiction about racial persecution, but he has, instead, now added a third and final volume to his series of New York-set crime capers starring Ray Carney—a respectable furniture salesman and part-time fence. The first installment, Harlem Shuffle (2021), charted Carney's life and crimes against the backdrop of civil rights struggles in the 1960s. The second book, Crook Manifesto (2023), continued his misadventures on meaner streets in the 1970s amid Black Liberation Army conflict and police corruption. Whitehead concludes his Harlem Trilogy with Cool Machine, this time plunging Carney into the so-called decade of greed. We find him older but not necessarily wiser. Has he got what it takes to endure a fresh onslaught of personal challenges and social upheavals? The post Pros and Cons appeared first on .

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