The Long Fall by Walter Mosley
Riverhead Books, 2009, $25.95, 306 pages, ISBN 978-1-59448-858-0
So, here I am, snug and sassy, and chock-full of chai tea and warm oatmeal cookies June just made . . . thinking about the MBR for the week. In my mind, I’ve been contrasting my home life with that of Leonid McGill, the new character from the pen of Walter Mosley, one of the deans of crime fiction, whom “Nobody, but nobody, writes this stuff like,” according to Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times Book Review. With more than 30 books to his credit, he is, in my opinion one of the grand dragons of the genre, who’s earned the total respect of his peers, as well as, his readers. The novel is The Long Fall and marks the debut of a new character and a new series. Leonid, my father was a communist union organizer who changed his first name to Trotsky, McGill, is an old-school private investigator, hard at work in twenty-first century New York City. An ex-boxer and hard drinker, he’s known for working on the dark side of the law. With the coming of the millennium however, and after a short term in prison, he’s turned over a new leaf, and is determined to stay on the side of the angels, working for the good guys. But, with bills and rent to pay, a large, complicated family to feed, and pressure from old associates to do a little dirty work . . . he finds it tough to keep his resolutions. When he’s nearly killed by an unknown assailant, a simple case of identification becomes a complex case of multiple murders and McGill is drawn ever-deeper into a weird and complex conspiracy of prestige, wealth and power. A splendid whodunit from one of the masters of detective fiction. Treat yourself and get acquainted with the work of Walter Mosley.
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