The Long Fall

January 5, 2009
Mosley leaves behind the Los Angeles setting of his Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones series (Devil in a Blue Dress
, etc.) to introduce Leonid McGill, a New York City private detective, who promises to be as complex and rewarding a character as Mosley’s ever produced. McGill, a 53-year-old former boxer who’s still a fighter, finds out that putting his past life behind him isn’t easy when someone like Tony “The Suit” Towers expects you to do a job; when an Albany PI hires you to track down four men known only by their youthful street names; and when your 16-year-old son, Twill, is getting in over his head with a suicidal girl. McGill shares Easy’s knack for earning powerful friends by performing favors and has some of the toughness of Fearless, but he’s got his own dark secrets and hard-won philosophy. New York’s racial stew is different than Los Angeles’s, and Mosley stirs the pot and concocts a perfect milieu for an engaging new hero and an entertaining new series.

Walter Mosley has crafted an introspective, somewhat sad private investigator, Leonid McGill, whose goal is trying to maintain that difficult balance on a straight and narrow path. Mosley's book is intelligently written and thoughtful--even the descriptive, though never gratuitous, fight scenes. Mirron Willis's voice for McGill, an African-American in his early 50s, is amazingly consistent. The supporting characters who surround McGill--New York cops, his teenage stepson, his Scandinavian wife, a hired killer, and others--are diverse, and Willis gives each a tone and identity. But his forte is pacing--simple, quiet, deliberate pauses show McGill's introspection and reflect the predicament he's in. A wonderful debut for Mosley's latest character. M.B. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine