Cool Machine - Colson Whitehead

Cool Machine is the third book in Colson Whitehead's Harlem trilogy, a series that in its second installment was already shaping up to have as important a place in the author's depiction of the experience of the black community in America as his other Pulitzer Prize winning works. Perhaps even more so for the manner in which it extends that vision across the decades of the 60s in Harlem Shuffle and the 70s in Crook Manifesto. through to the 80s now in Cool Machine. The central figure who is witness to the changes and challenges that the years bring is principally Ray Carney in his efforts to become a legitimate businessman selling furniture in his own Harlem store despite the tug of the criminal underworld coming to his door seeking his services as a fence for stolen goods.

It's not just underworld connections that Ray has to navigate his way though, some of them genuine friends that he is helping give a leg up through the challenges of trying to survive as a black person in America with limited opportunities. Ray is aware that there is not just a criminal underworld of regular "crook crooks", but a criminal 'overworld' with "straight-world deputies of varying degrees of corruption". And, it's in how Ray and his crook friends and associates navigate their way through the straight-crooked world that provides terrific insights and thrilling escapades, but as always with Whitehead, with a human heart underneath.

Arriving in the 1980s, Ray faces new challenges in his reopened store after the fire that engulfed it in the conflagration - in more than one sense of the word - that erupted in the previous book, Crook Manifesto. These are times of major social change for some in Reagan years - "One day you're tuning in, turning on and dropping out, and the next you're salivating over your tax cut". Whitehead captures this period of New York in superficial glamour with a gritty and edgy undercurrent still running through it with some wonderful all is gritty colour, where "To describe a wall as “covered in graffiti” missed the mark; more accurately, the graffiti had some wall in it". It's not just clever writing whether it think this is clever or not, but it one of the many facets that characterise NYC in the 80s, and there are many others well-observed here.

Ray is doing well, his furniture sales business doing well, his wife Elizabeth setting up her own travel agency business, but they aren't "yuppies" by any means; money is needed to expand and the banks aren't lending. Definitely not to women and black women at that. Ray still hustles a bit on the side, partly for the money, partly to help out friends, but also because he just enjoys the game of it. It's always risky however and it can be very easy to get into something that is bigger than he would like. As he finds out when he is asked to handle a sapphire for Dwayne, not realising that the stone is hot and not realising that 'Dwayne' is actually 'Uncle Rich', something of a legend in Harlem. It ends up with him getting involved on a daring raid while another criminal outfit is looking to settle an old score with Uncle Rich. As Ray regretfully observes about the person who got him into this mess - "That's what you get for associating with someone who votes for Reagan."

I thought we were going to get more of a focus on Elizabeth in the second part, but she is wiser when it comes to not mixing business with criminal elements, something that inadvertently happens however when she recommends friend of the family Pepper to someone who is looking for 'security'. Older now, still suffering a stomach complaint, Pepper nonetheless knows the ropes when dealing deal with the crook factory that is NYC in the 80s and he hasn't made a break from the scene either. Elizabeth recommends him to Patterson, an art dealer looking for backup rather than a bodyguard, someone just to keep an eye on things in places that might not be safe for a man in his line of business. Patterson hasn't told him that the deal he is working in to acquire a valuable artwork is a little on the crooked side in a rather dubious location in the new underground freak nightlife and graffiti art scene, an art market dealing in stolen artefacts. Inevitably things go badly, even worse when the 'Melancholy Hitman' gets involved, and none of this does much for Pepper's stomach condition.

The third part of Cool Machine takes place several years later in the decade when Carney’s and Elizabeth's businesses are doing well, and Carney can keep himself out of the crooked dealings. But bad things still go down in NYC. Carney’s nephew - or whatever the son of a cousin is - has disappeared after the shooting of a lawyer he was working for, and Carney - known to get things done - has been asked to see if he can look in some places where he might be found. Again not very nice places but it's a different kind of not very nice. We are well into the 1980s now and gentrification is evident everywhere; yuppies and bankers are occupying old haunts, poverty and drugs are rife and crime has lost its old time hands-on glamour and has become almost industrialised. It's an ideal way to close the trilogy, capping the changes over the decades, where change hasn't necessarily always been for the better. It's not nostalgic for the bad old days, but it certainly underlines how we are where we are today.

The three 'escapades' in Cool Machine are not unlike the episodes in Crook Manifesto but the subject matter is relevant and it's the fact that this is part of a trilogy that makes it more than a fixed period piece (I know, talking about the 80s is ‘period’ now). The experience of the past is what has defined or failed to eradicate the problems of the past. As a whole, the series speaks as much about the American political, social, judicial and criminal systems as much as black experience of it. It's a fascinating, not to say entertaining opportunity to look back and reflect and that's what Whitehead, through Carney, does here. Carney recognises the "churn" of the changing face and pace of NYC and questions what he has done that has real value now in the moneyed times of the 80s, and the bigger question of whether the changes over the decades have necessarily brought any real value to lives arises naturally out of this.

Conceptually as part of the Harlem Trilogy, Cool Machine is brilliant, insightful, thrilling and entertaining. It's the writing really that shines, that guides you through the book as smoothly as Ray’s salesman patter, a skill that Carney finds comes in handy here in a tense situation in the third part of the novel. There is practically a gem on every page. If some of the references might go over your head or you are not as familiar with NYC and Harlem as Whitehead is familiar with it, it all has a wonderful ring to it, a richness of character and insightfulness. You will love the city in all its contradictions and crookedness as seen through the eyes of Ray Carney. Much like the first two books then, and this closing book is very bit as good and as every bit worth extending into a new era, another absolutely fascinating look back on the changes that take place over a lifetime and another worthy book for this acclaimed author. The ending is just perfect.

Reading notes: Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead is published by Little Brown on the 21st July 2026. I received an advance copy through NetGalley. I still haven't read the first book in the trilogy, picking up only a sense of it from the second book Crook Manifesto, which means that the books can certainly be read standalone, better when you read two of them. I can't imagine the impact of reading all three back to back, but I will at least have to find time to read Harlem Shuffle which I missed first time around.