Named after Alexandre Dumas, the famous French author of The Count of Monte Christo and the grandson of a French nobleman and a Black Haitian slave, The Dumas Club is a fraternity of Harlem’s moneyed elite, and to get ahead Carney wants to become a member. His second goal is to cut his ties to the world of crime and become a fully legitimate businessman. His first goal is to be successful enough economically to move his family from their small flat within earshot of the elevated train to Riverside Drive, a neighborhood more acceptable to his in-laws living on the famous Strivers’ Row, home of the Harlem elite.

But Carney considers himself “only slightly bent when it came to being crooked,” seeing himself as merely a middleman, facilitating the natural flow of goods in and out of people’s lives, no questions asked, no one hurt by his transactions. Unknown to his wife Elizabeth, he also traffics in stolen goods, like jewelry or electronic appliances. Carney is the up-and-coming owner of Carney’s Furniture on 125th Street, Harlem’s main thoroughfare, selling new and used furniture. And finally, Cool It Baby is set at the time of the 1964 Harlem riot erupting in the wake of the shooting and killing of 15-year-old Black teenager James Powell by an off-duty white NYPD officer. Dorvay tells about Ray Carney, our main protagonist, and his scheme of revenge for a personal sleight from one of Harlem’s elite. The Truck is set in 1959 and centers on a plan to rob the historic Hotel Theresa, once known as the ‘Waldorf of Harlem’. 1969) follows in the footsteps of other African American crime writers like Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher ( The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem, 1932) and Chester Himes ( Cotton Comes to Harlem, 1965, and eight other titles) setting their suspenseful fictions in New York’s – and America’s – most famous Black neighborhood, Harlem, Harlem itself and its history one of the focuses of Whitehead’s novel. Disrespect the order and the whole system breaks down” – Colson Whitehead, epigraph to “Dorvay”, Part Two of Harlem Shuffle

2021 colson whitehead novel