In 2019, Colson Whitehead, the author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, decided to realise a long-held ambition and write a crime caper. Harlem Shuffle follows furniture salesman Ray Carney through three decades and three crimes, as his crooked side-hustle as a fence for stolen goods takes over his life.
In order to flesh out his protagonist, Whitehead, who appeared on the cover of magazine in 2019, headline America’s Storyteller, walked the streets of Harlem. There, the 51-year-old discovered that even he, born
