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Crook Manifesto

‘Fast, fun, ribald’ Sunday Times

Colson Whitehead

$49.99

Hardback

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English
Fleet
18 July 2023
'Glorious' New York Times Book Review

'The compelling energy of a crime thriller and the sharp wit of social satire' Guardian

'Whitehead's crime series is one of the most enjoyable streaks in recent fiction' Telegraph

'This novel has it all' Mail on Sunday

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER: a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.

1971, New York City. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is going bankrupt, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney is trying to keep his head down, his business up and his life straight. But then he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up an old police contact, who wants favours in return. For Ray, staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated - and deadly.

1973. The old ways are being overthrown by the thriving counterculture, but Pepper, Carney's enduringly violent partner in crime, is a constant. In these difficult times, Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem, finding himself in a world of Hollywood stars and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook - to their regret.

1976. Harlem is burning, while the country gears up for the Bicentennial. Carney is trying to come up with a celebratory July 4th advertisement he can actually live with, while his wife Elizabeth is campaigning for her childhood friend, rising politician Alexander Oakes. When a fire seriously injures one of Carney's tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it, navigating a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent and the utterly corrupt.

'Fast, fun, ribald... with a touch of Quentin Tarantino' Sunday Times

'A delight' Financial Times

'Hugely enticing' Independent
By:  
Imprint:   Fleet
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 236mm,  Width: 164mm,  Spine: 36mm
Weight:   560g
ISBN:   9780349727646
ISBN 10:   0349727643
Pages:   336
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Colson Whitehead is a multi-award winning and bestselling author whose works include The Nickel Boys, The Underground Railroad, The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt and a collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice and is a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships. For The Underground Railroad, Whitehead won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Fiction, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a second time for The Nickel Boys, which also won the George Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and The Kirkus Prize. The Underground Railroad has been adapted as an Amazon Prime TV series, produced and directed by the Academy Award winning director Barry Jenkins, and was broadcast in 2021. He lives with his family in New York City.

Reviews for Crook Manifesto: ‘Fast, fun, ribald’ Sunday Times

Whether in high literary form or entertaining, page-turner mode, the man is simply incapable of writing a bad book -- Ian Williams * Guardian * In Whitehead's second crime novel, Harlem's Ray Carney is once again a striving African American businessman and father trying to get ahead while sticking to the straight and narrow, a path that continually eludes him * Oprah Daily * Whitehead has a talent for creating ambiguous, complex scenes that fix in your memory * Evening Standard * Colson Whitehead is one of the most talented storytellers in contemporary fiction, and watching him switch his approach and flex new muscles is a wildly entertaining reading experience * Los Angeles Review of Books * As usual, when he moves into a new genre, he keeps the bones but does his own decorating * Washington Post * Whitehead's gift for sudden, often grotesque eruptions of violence is omnipresent, so much so that you almost feel squeamish to recognize this book for the accomplished, streamlined, and darkly funny comedy of manners it is . . . It's not just crime fiction at its craftiest, but shrewdly rendered social history * Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW * Whitehead captures the menace and the beauty of the city in exhilarating detail within the many-faceted, rollicking plot that propels his second, magnificently vibrant and transcendent Ray Carney novel. Readers will hunt for any new book by Whitehead, but the newest in his Harlem saga will be sought with particular zeal * Booklist * Literary titan Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle is one of the best New York novels in recent memory, one of those books one doesn't want to end, so it's a real treat to have a sequel * Publishers Weekly, Best Summer Reads * As well as being funny, effortlessly streetwise and criminally pleasurable to read it's also politically enlightening and quietly incendiary -- Jane Graham * Big Issue *


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