One year after the formidable Harlem Shuffle, A 1960s noir novel about a furniture salesman who gets mixed up with his cousin’s schemes and some tough guys, here’s the sequel: The Rule of Crime. Harlem is still the setting, but we’ve moved on to the 1970s. A terrible decade for New York, now an open-air dump and a dangerous place to be. Furniture salesman Ray Carney has decided to behave himself, to retire. But he’s making a break for his daughter, an absolute fan of the Jackson Five, whom she desperately wants to see on stage. Ray has no other solution but to ask Munson, a totally rotten cop who, in exchange for the precious tickets, asks him for a small favor.

Obviously, things are about to get out of hand. The explosive tone of Harlem Shuffle, but the Dantesque evocation of New Yorkreal-estate shenanigans, the struggle for civil rights and blacksploitation all add up to a powerful story…