Another first from shape-shifting Colson Whitehead: A crime-novel sequel

Review Crook Manifesto By Colson Whitehead Doubleday: 336 pages, $29 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. You’re Colson Whitehead, and you’ve just pocketed a couple of Pulitzers for harrowing novels — “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys” — that wrung beauty from the abyss of America’s racist past. “He didn’t know if they were sexually active, but they were certainly promiscuous, with sponsorship deals with no less than three breakfast cereals.” The pull of Michael, Tito and the boys leads Carney back into the jewel fencing game, which in turn leads him to a comically corrupt, terrifying and pilled-up police detective named Munson, now a desperate animal hunted by the Knapp Commission — a panel formed in 1970 to investigate police corruption. The last gives Whitehead ample opportunity to riff on Bicentennial mania: “On billboards all over town, Lady Liberty held a mustard-splattered Nathan’s hot dog instead of her ledger, and Crazy Eddie’s arranged the Founding Fathers around a document legislating ‘Insane Savings!’ ” Whitehead has always had a sharp instinct for the workings of culture; some of his best work, including “Apex Hides the Hurt” and “John Henry Days,” are about this very subject. Whitehead’s Harlem novels serve as unlikely companions to his 2003 nonfiction book “The Colossus of New York,” a collection of love letters to the city that is everything: good, bad and ruthlessly indifferent.