Where I Visit 1920s Harlem and a Spy Story Breaks Out

The Strivers' Row Spy by Jason Overstreet
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those books I discovered because I liked the author's engagement on twitter. I'm glad I did.

This novel takes place mostly in NYC, in the 1920s, in a vibrant but constantly changing Harlem. Sidney Temple is a recent college graduate who's smart, tough, ambitious, confident, and capable, and he gets recruited by the FBI. They want him, as one of their first black agents, to infiltrate black organizations to help make a case against supposed communists like WEB Dubois and Marcus Garvey, who competed for supporters in the African American community of the time. He cooperates, but with private reservations, using his position to pass along information to Dubois, who he admires. His divided loyalties create difficult complications for him, and it gets harder and harder to manage his double life. Or triple, really.

It's a spy story in part but also a historical novel, and the author takes enough time to deal with issues, to let a variety of characters show the reader some of what black citizens were thinking about and fighting for and arguing about. At the same time, we're shown what the white power structure was doing, how much effort they were expending to try to hold back any movement that empowered the nation's African American minority.

As a liberal white guy reading a book by a POC aimed (one would suppose) mostly at readers who are also POC, I felt like I was getting a look behind the scenes. A bit, at least. And I found it not just entertaining but instructive, and political without becoming strident. It felt like a fair handling of the issues, an even-handed presentation of the situation in Harlem in the 1920s. The characters are round enough (excepting minor characters, of course) with enough good guys and bad guys and in-between guys of all ethnicities to avoid the appearance of presenting simple judgments and simple answers. Life is complex; the author doesn't try to erase that.

In terms of entertainment, I enjoyed the book, but the last quarter of the book was definitely the most fun, with the most complications, the most action, and the most straightforward spy work. It's good to be exposed to new ideas and perspectives, but it's also good to enjoy an exciting story. Wonderful to encounter both.

Recommended.

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