. In Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead makes the creation of uptown Manhattan in the late 1950s and early 1960s—as well as a series of heists in which Carney becomes enmeshed—look easy to do, when of course it’s not. Whitehead’s prose is smart, jumpy, and pleasingly digressive. The storytelling seems effortless, and yet I can’t recall another work of fiction in 2021 that offered such high entertainment value.