I have read a couple of Colson Whitehead's other books and I think he is a great writer. Crook Manifesto is set in Harlem during the 1970's. Starting in 1971, furniture store owner and fencer of stolen goods, Ray Carney is trying to keep his head down. Trash is piling up in the streets, the city is about to go bankrupt, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Ray goes on the straight and narrow until his daughter, May, really really really wants tickets to see the Jackson Five concert. Next it is the Bicentennial year and Ray wonders how to celebrate that. By the end of the book the year is 1976. Crooks abound but so do politicians who really are crooks who haven't been found out yet. Some crooks can be kind and some politicians can be outright nasty. This was a very entertaining, if not violent, read.
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