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.

January 15, 2009
The creator of Easy Rawlins, Socrates Fortlow and Fearless Jones introduces a new detective struggling to live down his checkered past in present-day New York.

Leonid McGill has never killed anyone maliciously, but he 's done plenty of other bad things. Still working as a private eye in his 50s, he 's decided to expiate his sins by going "from crooked to only slightly bent. " So he 's not eager to help Albany shamus Ambrose Thurman track down four men for vague and unpersuasive reasons, especially after he learns that one is dead, a second is in prison and a third is in a holding cell. Who pays $10,000 to locate men like these unless some further crime is involved? McGill isn 't any happier about finding a union accountant for midlevel mobster Tony "The Suit " Towers. And he 's deeply troubled when his computer spying in his own home tells him that Twill, his wife Katrina 's 16-year-old son, plans to kill the father of a girl who 's been sending him distraught e-mails. But the PI 's heart drops to his shoes when he realizes that someone is executing the men he 's been hired to locate for Thurman.

Plotting has never been Mosley 's strong point, but McGill, a red-diaper baby, ex-boxer and a man eternally at war with himself, may be his most compelling hero yet.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 15, 2009
Mosley, a master of detective stories best known for his Easy Rawlins series, introduces Leonid McGill, a reformed bad man who strives to hold to his own principles in the roughest situations. Cops don't trust him, hard guys pressure him, and most people underestimate him. His wife abandoned him but now wants him back, two of their kids aren't his, and he's in love with a beautiful woman who's trying to kick him out of his office. McGill is hired to find the names and addresses of four men. Soon, they're all dead, and he wants to know why. The violence escalates, but he refuses to give up. Mosley always tells a compelling story, and this is no exception. But, unlike the Rawlins novels, it has an air of the formulaic. It takes too many digressions to explain McGill's past, and while the Rawlins's Mouse comes across persuasively as a particularly lethal product of the harsh ghettos, McGill's Hush, an ex-hit man who now drives a limousine, seems too good (or bad) to be real. For all its flaws, though, once you start reading this mystery, you won't want to stop. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 11/1/08.]David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2008
Mosley publishes so often and so eclectically that a new book is no longer an eventa new mystery series, however, probably qualifies. After Easy Rawlins apparent death in Blonde Faith (2007), Mosley leaves 1960s L.A. behind for contemporary New York City. Leonid McGill, a PI with a dirty conscience, has decided to change his ways after his past caught up with him and died, spitting blood and curses on the rug. Given his tangled professional and personal life, its less a fresh start than a new take on existing moral quandaries. Readers familiar with Mosley will experience d'j vu regarding both McGills complicated relationships and his pronouncements about life and how to live it. But despite the large cast of characters, McGill lacks a true foil. There was electricity when Mosley divided superego and id between Easy and Mouse, but there are fewer sparks here: McGill doesnt form meaningful connections to other characters, and how much readers enjoy spending time in his head will depend on how much they enjoy Mosleys oeuvre as a whole. And what do we get from the modern setting? Well, McGill uses high-tech spy gadgets, but ironically, hes a bit anachronistic, someone who would seem more at home in the 1960s than the 2000s. A few scenes recall vintage Mosley, but despite the change in series, his books are starting to blur.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)