Harlem Shuffle

Ray Carney sells reasonably priced furniture to his Harlem neighbors and is building a respectable life with his wife and growing family — even if his father-in-law's Striver's Row family never lets him forget his more disreputable roots. Those roots surface whenever his cousin Freddie drops off the occasional piece of "found" jewelry for Ray to quietly resell downtown.

When Freddie volunteers Ray as the fence for a heist targeting the Hotel Theresa, the job goes sideways and pulls Ray into a world of corrupt cops and Harlem crime bosses he can no longer avoid. Colson Whitehead sets the resulting tug-of-war between "Ray the striver" and "Ray the crook" against a richly detailed early-1960s Harlem, blending crime plot with family saga and social novel.