Known to Evil

Starred review from January 25, 2010
Bestseller Mosley scores a clean knockout in his excellent second mystery featuring New York City PI Leonid McGill (after 2009’s The Long Fall
). Still striving to atone for some of the lives he’s ruined, the 54-year-old McGill laments that there are “no straight lines in the life or labors of the private detective.” Instead, crises crowd him at every turn. A powerful, shadowy city hall official wants McGill to locate and protect a young woman named Tara Lear, a task complicated by a murder. Older son Dimitri is involved with a Russian hooker whose pimp doesn’t want to let her go. Younger son Twill, trying to help his brother, risks violating parole restrictions. Relations with wife Katrina and lover Aura Ullman, “with her Aryan eyes and Ethiopian skin,” are in flux. The ex-boxer has an eclectic group in his corner, including computer whiz Tiny “Bug” Bateman, but McGill is the one taking the blows and meting out punishment in this contemporary noir gem. Author tour.

Mosley's newest detective is Leonid Trotsky McGill--quick with his fists, hard on the criminals who cross his investigative path, and long on internal dialogue. Smoky-voiced Mirron Willis depicts McGill as he continually goes up against police, family members, and even gangsters. Moving between a flat intonation for McGill's ruminations, subtle Russian accents for the gangsters, and husky tones for New Yorkers of various races, Willis enlivens all the characters of the city's underbelly. McGill must discover who murdered a former client, save his son's girlfriend from the Russian mob, and keep his marriage alive--all without straying too far from the right side of the legal system. M.B.K. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine