Walkin' the Dog [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Walter Mosley (Author), Paul Winfield (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1999

Nine years after being released from prison, ex-convict Socrates Forlow is struggling to rebuild his life--with a girlfriend, a steady job, and a pet--but his efforts to maintain his principles and do the right thing is complicated when the police make him their prime suspect for every neighborhood crime. Simultaneous.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Once he had dreamed up the Easy Rawlins series, with its colored-coded titles and suave protagonist, Walter Mosley could have coasted for the rest of his life. Instead he delved into impressionistic fiction (RL's Dream) and sci-fi (Blue Light)--and came up with his own variant on Ellison's invisible man, a forbidding ex-con named Socrates Fortlow. The author first introduced this inner-city philosopher in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, allowing him to vault one ethical hurdle after another. Now Socrates returns in Walkin' the Dog, still operating out of his tiny Watts apartment, still figuring precisely what to make of his freedom.

Like his dog, Killer--a spirited mutt who's missing his two hind legs--Socrates has to contend with a number of severe handicaps. Forget the fact that he's a black man in a white society. He's also the fall guy for every crime committed in the vicinity, a scapegoat of near-biblical proportions:

The police always came. They came when a grocery store was robbed or a child was mugged. They came for every dead body with questions and insinuations. Sometimes they took him off to jail. They had searched his house and given him a ticket for not having a license for his two-legged dog. They dropped by on a whim at times just in case he had done something that even they couldn't suspect.

Yet Socrates is no poster child for racial victimization. Why? Because Mosley never soft-pedals the fact that he is, or was, a murderer. "He was a bad man," we are assured at one point. "He had done awful things." Deprived of any sort of sentimental pulpit, Socrates makes his moral determinations on the fly. Should he admit that he killed a mugger in self-defense? Can he force his adopted son Darryl to stay in school? Should he murder a corrupt cop who's terrorized his entire neighborhood? His answers are consistently surprising, and that fact--combined with the author's shrewd, no-nonsense prose--should make every reader long for Mosley's next excursion into the Socratic method. --James Marcus --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Mosley returns to character Socrates Fortlow (debuted in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned) in this follow-up collection of short stories. Fortlow is an aging ex-con, having spent more than half his life in an Indiana state penitentiary for a long-ago killing. Now, living in Los Angeles, working a menial supermarket job, Fortlow still subscribes to a prisoner's code of ethics: he is suspicious, vengeful andAabove allAuncannily wise. For him, "Everything seemed to have reason and deep purpose." He's testing himself as he edges his way back into society. His boss offers him a better job, but he feels strange taking it. Meantime, he is questioned by police for a murder he didn't commit. Conversely, he kills a mugger in a confrontation and is never questioned. Serving as a role model, he fosters a young prot?g?, Darryl, a boy whose simmering violent nature seems all too familiar to him. Actor Winfield richly brings Fortlow's trials and triumphs to life, his voice imbuing a sense of the ex-con's heroic fatigue as he struggles to carry the weight of the world each day. Simultaneous release with the Little, Brown hardcover.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Hachette Audio; Abridged edition (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570427100
• ISBN-13: 978-1570427107
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,053,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #53 in Books > Books on Cassette > Authors, A-Z > ( M )

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, November 11, 1999

By 

T. Martin "computer addict" (Rye, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walkin' the Dog (Hardcover)

Walter Moseley is a rare gem of a writer and thinker in an age of relativism. He uses his magnificent character Socrates Fortlow to ask the big questions--what does it mean to live a moral life? What's more, Moseley uses inner city LA to ask if such a life is possible in a setting of poverty and crime. Socrates Fortlow is one of the most compelling literary characters I've encountered in a long time and while I enjoyed "Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned" more, "Walkin' the Dog" finds a more complicated Socrates than the first time around. Moseley is a wonderful writer with an omniverously curious mind. It's a rewarding read.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An original character from a powerful writer, April 19, 2000

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walkin' the Dog (Hardcover)

Socrates Fortlow is one of the great creations in American fiction. A man still living out his sentence even though he's been out of prison nine years, he struggles to be a good man, a decent man, a man who makes a difference. He takes care of his two-legged dog, his adopted son Darryl, and tries to defend his neighborhood from the depredations of a bad cop; but Mosley, a writer whose prose is poetic, does not romanticize him. There is life in this collection of scenes set in LA's South Central.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excllent storyline and street philosophy, September 29, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walkin' the Dog (Paperback)

After residing as a guest of the State of Indiana for half of his life, sexagenarian Socrates Fortlow has gone straight for the past decade, living in Los Angeles. However, once convicted as a murderer-rapist, always convicted by the police. Any violent crime in the neighborhood means Socrates is one of the usual suspects. In his brave barren world, Socrates is becoming a champion of the underdog (human and canine), but has no idea where his new role will lead him.

WALKIN' THE DOG is actually an interrelated short story collection that works because Walter Mosley makes each story show growth in Socrates. Nothing is sacred especially society's major social, political, and racial issues as the star of the book lives up to his more illustrious namesake with a street corner philosophy. Readers will enjoy this anthology and want to read the first Socrates story (see ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED, ALWAYS OUTGUNNED) as well as demand from Mr. Mosley a follow-up tale that shows what happens to the lead protagonist at the crosswalk of life.

Harriet Klausner