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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Only slightly bent, March 6, 2010
This review is from: The Long Fall: The First Leonid McGill Mystery (Paperback)
I never read the Easy Rawlins books. Maybe I should, because I'm in love with private investigator Leonid McGill at his very first appearance in The Long Fall.
LT (middle name Trotter) is a 53-year-old black man "two inches shorter and forty pounds heavier than a man should be." He's all muscle, a trained boxer, though he doesn't box. He has an unfaithful wife he doesn't love, and only one of their kids is biologically his. His favorite son is not his real son.
He can't be with the woman he really loves because his family needs him.
As an adolescent LT divided his leisure time between art museums and the boxing gym. He's very well read for a guy who earns a living doing shady deals.
LT never kills people, but his expertise has been used by the kinds of people who do kill. We meet him at a turning point in life. He's having too many nightmares. From now on instead of being crooked, he hopes to be only slightly bent. He's practicing meditation to help deal with his guilty past.
LT has a deadly talent. He can locate anybody, no matter how well hidden. In this book the bad guys are using LT again, but very cleverly, so that he only finds out when people start dying in his wake. He doesn't like it one bit, especially when his own name joins the hit list. Finding the mastermind behind the slaughter takes LT into some strange and frightening places. Be prepared for a complex plot with fascinating subplots!
Walter Mosley has written a wonderful book full of quirky characters and utterly engaging human dilemmas.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally, October 12, 2010
This review is from: The Long Fall: The First Leonid McGill Mystery (Paperback)
I can remember when "Devil in a Blue Dress" came out. It was all over the bookstores, in dumps and displays in the front of various stores. Everyone who read mysteries read it that year. I'm the guy who sees what everyone else is doing, and does something else, just out of stubbornness, so I didn't read it for a year or so, but when I did, I realized that the hype wasn't in this case just manufactured. "Devil" is a truly great detective novel, one of the best first ones in the last 25-30 years, up there with Dennis Lehane's "A Drink Before the War" and Jonathan Kellerman's "When the Bough Breaks".
Mosley's had a somewhat uneven career since, in my opinion anyway. Several of the Easy Rawlins books since have been good (I especially liked "The Little Yellow Dog") and I liked the series of short stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, the guy who'd spent 20 years in jail for killing his wife and her lover. On the other hand, he's branched out and tried to be a "serious novelist", and that can be dangerous. I avoided "Blue Light" and his other more experimental stuff, and I didn't care for "The Man in my Basement" much at all. The whole series with Paris Minton, sidekick of Fearless Jones, just annoyed me, and the last book, where Paris in one passage modestly tells you he has a big schlong, while bedding one of many different women he enjoys during the course of the book, just struck me as a juvenile fantasy, predictable and not very interesting. I keep waiting for Mosley to recapture what he had when he started, before he got ideas and tried to be taken seriously.
The author is from Los Angeles, but he's moved to New York City (I gather his wife's in the "theatah") and so his new series is set in that city. Leonid McGill is a different character from Easy Rawlins. He's more of a shifty character, someone who in the past framed others for crimes they didn't commit (though most of the time they'd done *something*) and even occasionally fingered a target for a hit man. He finally did something that touched his soul in a profound way, and so now he's decided to walk the straight and narrow, and only take jobs where he can help people. Unfortunately, the past has a way of catching up with people in Mosley's books, and McGill is no exception to the rule. Someone hires him to find a list of people, against his better judgment he does it because he needs the money to pay the rent, and soon the men he's found wind up dead. When he goes looking for the guy who hired him, it turns out that individual is dead also, and soon after someone tries to kill McGill.
This is a standard private eye novel in the Chandler style. The plot is a bit over-complicated, has too many characters, and is really more about the setting (New York City) and the people that inhabit it than it is about the plot. McGill's a fascinating character, resenting his Communist father (who renamed himself Tolstoy and named his sons Leonid and Nikita), and feeling a sense of obligation to the wife who temporarily left him for a disgraced Wall Street hotshot, but came back and is trying to provide a home for him. The secondary characters, from the rest of Leonid's family to the various underworld figures he knows and interacts with, is pretty much completely fascinating. At one point one of the rich white people actually calls Leonid the "n" word, and he just ignores the guy. Easy would have been enraged, and I think Mouse would have shot the guy twice in the face.
This is a different character for a different world. I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it. Very very good.
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Wait and See approach, April 6, 2010
This review is from: The Long Fall: The First Leonid McGill Mystery (Paperback)
Once upon a time, Mr. Mosley was my favorite author. I never missed an Easy Rawlins or Fearless novel and I still long for their adventures. "Devil in a Blue Dress" is one of my favorite movies of all time and I have seen it at least 6 times. I adored Easy Rawlins so much, I bought the last few novels in hardcover for the full price!! I wanted Mr. Mosley to benefit from the hardcover royalties.
Now on to his new book, "The Long Fall". To put it bluntly, I don't like it. Hold on, let me back up a bit. I don't like any of the leading characters. Leonid McGill made a career of setting up innocent people and now he wants to change. Really, then get all of those people you set up OUT OF JAIL. The other major characters, his wife, favorite son, and friend (former assassin) are all despicable. Mr. Mosley, why didn't you make a good major character? Everyone in the book, except for the cop, are terrible people with terrible past. This book reminds me of the former show "Oz". There wasn't anyone in the show that you could call a good person. I feel the same way about this book. Mr. Mosley could have made his son a good person instead of a born criminal. His wife could have been good person. By the way, does Mr. Mosley have something against marriage? Easy Rawlins couldn't have a happy relationship either. I have been married happily for 16 years and MANY of my friends have been married longer. Mr. Mosley, there are people out there whose wife doesn't cheat on them at every opportunity.
Right now I don't know if I will read "Known to Evil". If I do decide to read it, I will definitely wait for the paperback or get it from a discount bookseller. I only gave this three stars because of my fondness for Mr. Mosley's previous works. I even bought "This year you write your novel" because he inspired me to write one. I feel so bad criticizing this book. I still adore Mr. Mosley's previous work and will think fondly of him because of it. Go back to writing about "Fearless" Mr. Mosley. At least he and Paris are a characters I can cheer on and if I am not mistaken, others share my opinion.
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