Cool Machine

A Novel

By: Colson Whitehead

Narrated by: Dion Graham

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From #1 New York Times bestselling author and two-time Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead, an exuberantly entertaining novel that brings to life 1980s New York in the magnificent final volume of his Harlem Trilogy

1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, successful business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture’s Dealer of the Month. When the banks won’t give his beloved wife Elizabeth a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist, and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind.

1983. To some, Carney’s friend and partner in crime, Pepper, is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he’s feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones. When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favor to Elizabeth, he’s plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene. Luckily for him, whether you’re uptown or down, everyone speaks the same language of violence—Pepper is a native speaker.

1986. Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie’s death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie’s son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he’s spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.

With his usual pitch-perfect prose, Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination, Cool Machine roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to the Meadowlands, to show that in New York, and in the lives of Whitehead’s vivid characters, it’s what’s below the surface that reveals the truth.

I could read this series over and over…

Matter of fact, let me start over right now. One of the absolute best series from one of the absolute best writers of our time.

Fantastic Story

This is one of the best Audible books Ive ever listened to, with brilliant writing and flawless narration! A true masterpiece! I'd give it more than five stars if I could.

Great finish to this trilogy.

Vivid picture of the underbelly of New York City in the mid to late 20th century.

Ray Carney and Pepper are perfectly written characters

Ray Kearney will live in my memory forever. I doubt Ray and I would be friends, but I’m sure I’d buy a couch from him. Pepper’s character is perfectly written. It’s one of my favorite book series that I’ve ever read.

Worth the wait!

I enjoyed this novel and could not stop listening once I started! The narration was on point as expected!