The Long Fall [Hardcover]

Walter Mosley (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 24, 2009

His name is etched on the door of his Manhattan office: LEONID McGILL, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. It’s a name that takes a little explaining, but he’s used to it. “Daddy was a communist and great-great- Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland. You know, the black man’s family tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story.”

Ex-boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades mostly in cash and favors: McGill’s an old-school P.I. working a city that’s gotten fancy all around him. Fancy or not, he has always managed to get by—keep a roof over the head of his wife and kids, and still manage a little fun on the side—mostly because he’s never been above taking a shady job for a quick buck. But like the city itself, McGill is turning over a new leaf, “decided to go from crooked to slightly bent.”

New York City in the twenty-first century is a city full of secrets—and still a place that reacts when you know where to poke and which string to pull. That’s exactly the kind of thing Leonid McGill knows how to do. As soon as The Long Fall begins, with McGill calling in old markers and greasing NYPD palms to unearth some seemingly harmless information for a high-paying client, he learns that even in this cleaned-up city, his commitment to the straight and narrow is going to be constantly tested.

And we learn that with this protagonist, this city, this time, Mosley has tapped a rich new vein that’s inspiring his best work since the classic Devil in a Blue Dress.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Exclusive: Walter Mosley on Leonid McGill

My new detective series about the bad-guy-turned-good, Leonid McGill, has been a long time coming. As many of you know I cut my writing teeth on the Easy Rawlins series. Those novels are concerned with a time in L.A. (and America) when life was simple, black and white so to speak. Easy was an invisible soldier in an undeclared war where survival meant breaking the rules, and the laws, of a nation where inequality was the standard and class was a tattoo indelibly wrought on its citizens’ skins.

Leonid McGill, on the other hand, lives in the modern world. Rather than being a victim, he has spent his entire life as a victimizer working for professional criminals and other miscreants. He’s done jobs for the mob and bent businessmen looking to cut their losses; he’s robbed Peter to pay Paul and then turned in Paul for tax evasion.

In brief – Leonid McGill has not been a good man.

But Leonid has gotten as good as he’s given. Abandoned by his union organizing father at the age of twelve, Leonid watched his mother die of a broken heart within the next year. He’s gone from orphanage to foster home to the streets – fighting hard and never taking a backward step. He trained to be a boxer but found the ring of life to be a more suitable war.

Leonid is married with three children (though only one of them is his by blood). He and his wife have a relationship of sorts but there is little love in that bond. One gets the feeling that the only reason he hasn’t left this loveless union is that he just doesn’t know how to back down in a fight.

New York is not only McGill’s home but also the atmosphere he needs to survive. The city is his constitution and his nation. And so one day when he wakes up to realize that he has been on the wrong path for all of his fifty-odd years, Leonid does not abandon his home. Instead he decides to change direction against all the wrong that he’s done. Leonid is a man looking for redemption among the people he’s wronged in the city that he has betrayed.

This challenge will be the hardest battle the aging P.I. has ever taken on. The police have a lieutenant whose only assignment is bringing Leonid down. The mob has its hooks into Leonid, refusing to accept his resolve to go straight. His favorite teenage son Twill (the product of one his wife’s many affairs) is a loveable, and loving, sociopath who needs his father to run interference for the complex and brilliant troubles he gets into.

To say the least: Leonid is not your everyday detective. He is plagued by the deeds and victims of his criminal past and is therefore uncertain about the future. He has found love but holds back because of his hollow marriage. He is offered many jobs but often finds that the work itself unravels his vow to go straight.

Leonid’s human body and flawed past makes him a microcosm of America at a time when we are trying to turn the tide of history. He’s a hard-boiled hero in harder-still times; a six to one underdog in the most important fight of his life – or ours.

Easy Rawlins lived in my father’s world and the world of my father’s, and my own, people. Leonid McGill, however, lives in a world writ large. In Leonid’s America the truth is never only skin deep. And so to get at the underlying reality you definitely have to shed some blood.

Leonid is ready to bleed for what he now knows is right. He is a hero of the first order because he fights on with no promise, or even an inkling, of victory.

From Publishers Weekly

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. (Mar.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; First Edition edition (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594488584
• ISBN-13: 978-1594488580
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #460,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Walter Mosley is one of America's most celebrated and beloved writers. His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones, Fear Itself, and Fear of the Dark; the novels Blue Light and RL's Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and Walkin' the Dog. He lives in New York City.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#61 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

#79 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery

#61 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

#79 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 55 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Welcome to LT McGill's World March 24, 2009

By litaddiction VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

THE LONG FALL is the first book in Walter Mosley's new noir-ish series featuring the fiftysomething New York City private investigator, Leonid Trotter McGill ("LT"). Like other Mosley protagonists, LT is a smart, reflective observer, complex in his ethics and relationships in ways that intrigue readers and make them care deeply. He's a boxer with a Buddhist philosophy -- "Throwing a punch is the yang of a boxer's life. The yin is being able to avoid getting hit" -- and admits to having thrown enough yang that he's now changed his life "from crooked to only slightly bent."

The novel opens as LT seemingly nears completion of his current case -- locating four men who knew each other as boys -- but when accumulating troubles start to test his yin, the story takes off. Unfortunately, it took off without me, as I became lost in unfamiliar minor characters and could only half-follow the storyline. I finally stopped to re-read the first five chapters and discovered why: nearly 40 characters are introduced in those 30 pages, but few are adequately unpacked.

Still, I read Mosley for his settings and main characters, and the ones here have terrific series potential -- people and places that are unlike me in the ways that intrigue ... and deeply familiar in the ways that matter.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonder-fall March 24, 2009

By Miller VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Walter Mosley's The Long Fall is a mystery novel set in New York. The main character and narrator, Leonid, is perfection. A private investigator trying to balance what he believes is right and what is necessary to pay his rent and provide for his family. When he ignores his gut and takes the wrong case; inadvertently assisting in murder, he finds himself fighting for his life. Which is only the beginning of his problems, as his youngest son is also plotting a murder. There is a lot of back story and compelling family drama intermixed with the front burner story line--the book is obviously a series launch.

The plot is very intricate (sometimes predictable), but the structure and pace become consuming. I had some difficulty understanding how Leonid came up with some of his conclusions, but it could be that I was racing through the pages.

When I wasn't reading this book, I wanted to be reading this book. The Long Fall is as near a perfect mystery as I have read lately. I am looking forward to the next installment of the series.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard To Break Old Habits June 11, 2009

By Richard Schulman

Format:Hardcover

Love the Mosley books. The Long Fall's protagonist, Leonid, is a tough likable detective. He is trying to change from a predator who makes a living off the stupidity of humanity to one who now through self awareness chooses to help them. Leonid's problems are many; he is attached to his wife but they are not in love, and yet cannot leave his wife for a mistress that he does love, his children are troublesome, and his job demands violence and mayhem which he is beginning to find repulsive. What I particularly like is the honesty of Leonid. His stream of consciousness revelations are startling. His relationship with his three interesting children allows the reader to see how the affection for his children affects how he deals with his clients whom he is trying, together with himself, to navigate to safety. What is gripping is some of Leonids plans will not work. He is not in control of other people and their violence will cause him to protect himself by being hard nosed and if necessary violent. Leonid's confusion and doubts about his job but never about protecting his family resonates with me.
I like the way Mosley builds his book. The answers to the many questions begin to resolve only towards the end of the book. Keeping me interested right to the the finish. Nicely done Mr. Mosley.