Winter Preview 2014-2015: Part Ten

Sometimes I feel I live under a rock, at least as far as watching TV. This week I finally discovered The Wire, a crime drama set in Baltimore, Maryland that ran from 2002 to 2008. Its first season focuses on the drug trade in one of the city's housing projects and we see it from the perspective of both police and criminals. It is literary fiction unfolding on the screen.

I was shocked to learn that despite its critical acclaim, the series wasn't widely popular. This was perhaps due to its scheduling, a slowly developing and complex plot, a very flawed police force and use of slang and profanity. For example, a cop does a slipshod investigation of a woman shot in her kitchen and the two detectives later investigating the crime scene communicate with each other using only profanity, which doesn't prevent them from quickly figuring things out. I must be crude, because I found the scene very funny. I'm enjoying the episodes a lot.

We Material Witnesses are previewing winter books to keep us out from under a rock. If that's where you've been living, you might want to lookie here.

Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins in Devil in a Blue Dress

Many of us are familiar with Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins books, about a black man who moved to Los Angeles from Texas shortly after World War II and became a private investigator. Mosley also writes standalones and several other series (see Stop, You're Killing Me's Mosley page for details). They are all character-driven novels that focus on what makes a person tick, how we connect with each other and the prejudices and flaws that tear us apart. Mosley is a natural-born storyteller and even the books that aren't his best are enjoyable.

The next Mosley book, Inside a Silver Box (Tor, January 27), is similar to his The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey in that it doesn't fit readily into a single genre. It focuses on some of Mosley's enduring themes, the nature of good and evil and finding a way to bridge Americans' social and economic divides. The two New Yorkers who join together to battle evil in Inside a Silver Box couldn't begin their partnership in a more unlikely way.

Ronnie Bottoms is a black man and a criminal. Lorraine Fell is a white grad student jogging in Central Park when Ronnie clunks her with a rock. The dying Lorraine falls onto the Silver Box, a malignant alien race's powerful AI device that turned against and captured its designer, the Laz. The Box enables Ronnie to resurrect Lorraine, but when he does this, some of the Laz escape. The Box sends the duo off to gain superpowers and save humankind from the Laz, who now seek to regain their control over the Box. To prevent this, the Box might have to obliterate the Earth. It all seems to add up to Mosley unshackling his imagination, jumping on his hobbyhorse and going to town in A Big Way. And that should be very entertaining.

It sounds as if journalist Peter Buwalda has likewise let himself go wild in a first novel of feverish family dysfunction, Bonita Avenue (translated from the Dutch by Jonathan Reeder; Hogarth/Random House, January 13). Early reviewers call Buwalda a Herman Koch/Jonathan Franzen/Philip Roth hybrid. His unhappy mathematician and judo expert, Siem Sigerius, finds solace in online porn only to discover one of his favorite websites stars his stepdaughter, Joni.

And that's only the beginning of a 544-page epic that jumps between continents and breaks into multiple to-and-fro timelines that Kirkus likens to a structure achieved by a film director fueled by bourbon and coke, who has hacked away on his footage with "runic abandon." The novel is narrated by the unreliable trio of porn entrepreneur Joni, her schizophrenic ex-boyfriend, Aaron Bever, and her stepdad, Siem, whose possible candidacy for secretary of education opens him to blackmail. In addition, Siem's son, Wilbert, who was imprisoned––on Joni and Siem's perjured testimony (we're talking take-no-prisoners family warfare here, folks!)––slithers back, bent on retaliation.

The UK's Telegraph calls Bonita Avenue a "swirling helix of a family saga that swerves from gross-out sex comedy to pitch-black revenge tragedy as twist after twist reframes what we know about its dysfunctional cast" and I can't wait to read it before it hits the big screen.

After those two unusual books, are you ready for something quiet, insightful and kinda creepy? A Karin Fossum book could fit the bill. I also have hopes for The Sweetness of Life (translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch; Quercus/MacLehose, December 2), because (1) it's a bestseller in Germany and winner of the European Union Prize for Literature and (2) its author is a Viennese writer and child psychiatrist. Paulus Hochgatterer sets this psychological thriller in the Austrian village of Furth am See during the Christmas season.

It begins with Sebastian Wilfert's 6-year-old granddaughter, Katharina, playing with her opened presents at her grandfather's cabin. The doorbell rings and her grandfather goes to answer it. When she finds him later, he is sprawled dead outdoors, his face a mess of red against the snow. Katharina hasn't let loose of the two plastic toy pieces she then had in her hand or spoken since she was traumatized. She is taken to child psychiatrist Raffael Horn and Horn is pulled into Det. Ludwig Kovacs's murder investigation. Horn and Kovacs must deal with their own personal struggles as they uncover ill-will and violence amidst the village's holiday festivities.

There are 15 people trapped in a tanker truck awaiting rescue in John Vaillant's The Jaguar's Children (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, January 27). The truck was carrying its illegal human cargo across the border from Mexico to El Norte when it broke down. The coyotes (or human smugglers) have taken all the passengers' money under the guise of getting a mechanic and have disappeared. Among the 15 are Héctor and his friend César, who was knocked into a coma when the truck lurched to a stop. Héctor has located a name, AnniMac, with an American phone number on César's cellphone but he's unsure if his messages are getting through. Héctor's texts and sound files form part of the novel's narrative. During the next days, Héctor flashes back to his hometown of Oaxaca and what brought him to this situation. The novel is a combination of suspense and literary fiction.

Canadian journalist John Vaillant's previous books include The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed, about an act of eco-vandalism, and The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, about the hunt to trap a man-eating Siberian tiger. Both nonfiction books are excellent and the reason I want to read The Jaguar's Children, Vaillant's first novel.

I'm trying to figure out the perfect time to read Yrsa Sigurðardóttir's I Remember You: A Ghost Story (translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton, Minotaur, March 2014). I'll tell you when the perfect time is not. Not when I'm in the house at night alone and the house is creaking like it does only when my husband and kids are gone. How does it know?

Sigurðardóttir's upcoming book shouldn't be quite as eerie as her recent standalone. Reykjavik lawyer Thóra Gudmundsdottir returns in the fifth series book, Someone to Watch Over Me (translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton; Minotaur, February 17). Her client, Jósteinn Karlsson, has a friend, Jakob, with Down's Syndrome. Jakob has been convicted of setting the fire at his assisted-living facility that killed five people and Jósteinn wants Thóra to prove him innocent. Sigurðardóttir always weaves Iceland's past and current issues into her crime fiction. I'm looking forward to learning more about how Iceland's financial troubles have affected the country's social services and vulnerable citizens.

Have you read Okey Ndibe's Foreign Gods, Inc. (Soho, January 2014)? It is the story of Ikechukwu "Ike" Uzondu, who drives a New York City cab despite his economics degree from Amherst. Ike is hurting for money after his green-card marriage ends in divorce. He hits upon the idea of returning to his Nigerian village, stealing the statue of a god and selling it to a New York gallery specializing in such Asian and African antiques, Foreign Gods, Inc. This may sound like the description of a caper novel, but it's not. Using the framework of a literary thriller, it's a satirical and poignant look at culture clash and an American immigrant's dream.

After reading that book, I can't pass up Okey Ndibe's first novel, Arrows of Rain (Soho, January 6), originally published in 2000. It's about truth and justice and is set in the fictional African Republic of Madia, which has been ruled for 21 years by dictator Gen. Isa Palat Bello. The journalist Femi Adero uses a first-person narration to describe the fate of a man named Bukuru, sole witness to the drowning of a young prostitute.

That wraps it up for today but we'll be back tomorrow for another look at upcoming books.

Caters News Agency photo of two West Midlands snow policemen

Review of Walter Mosley's Rose Gold

Rose Gold by Walter Mosley

Like Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, Walter Mosley killed off his protagonist in 2007's Blonde Faith. Whether the author just needed a vacation from his most popular detective, or had really intended to drop him forever, he was persuaded to relent. Little Green was published in 2013, and Rose Gold, the latest in the series, was released yesterday by Doubleday. I was fortunate to get a pre-release copy for review, and am very glad the author decided to resurrect the series; he has lost none of his touch.

Easy has his hands full in this story, set not too long after the first Watts riots in 1965, that turbulent period of Vietnam veterans and protesters, free love, black militarism, and hippies. It was a time when everyone had passionate opinions and society seethed with sit-ins and riots. Easy, a black decorated World War II veteran, usually tries to keep a low profile; the racial equality promised by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 hadn't yet had much effect on the lives of blacks in Los Angeles.

For a change, the Los Angeles police acknowledge needing Easy's help, and are prepared to pay for it. Roger Frisk, Special Assistant to the Chief of Police, approaches Easy, who is in the midst of moving house, and asks him to find Rosemary Goldsmith, daughter of a millionaire arms dealer. Rosemary has disappeared from her college dorm room, likely in the company of a militant young black boxer named Bob Mantle, who is calling himself Uhuru Nolicé. Mantle is wanted for the shooting of three police officers during the course of a robbery. Whether Rosemary went with him willingly or was kidnapped is a matter of conjecture. Frisk wants Easy to find Mantle and recover the girl if possible, but under no circumstances to contact her family.

But the L.A. police are not the only people interested in finding Rose. First the FBI shows up and tells Easy to drop the case, but to report any results from inquiries he has made to them and not to the L.A. police. When two State Department officials come by to say that he is interfering with national security and tell him to stay out of the case, Easy starts a slow burn. Despite his instructions to the contrary, he visits the girl's father. Foster Goldsmith will neither confirm nor deny that his daughter has been kidnapped. He tells Easy, "I taught Rose to make her own bed when she was six years old. I told her that when a man or woman makes their own bed they sleep in it too." Whew, tough love in these circumstances!

One of the most charming things about this series is the network of friends that Easy has managed to build. Rich or poor, on either side of the law, many people have reason to remember him kindly. Part of the reason is that he is willing to do favors for others. Melvin Suggs, Easy's informal contact in the police department, has been suspended. Melvin had arrested a woman for passing counterfeit money, but then fell in love with her. Their affair may cost him his job, even though Mary has since left him. In exchange for information, Mel wants Easy to find Mary, regardless of the consequences.

By the time a ransom has been demanded––with one of Rosemary's fingers as earnest––Easy has begun to suspect that Bob Mantle, her apparent kidnapper, is being made a scapegoat by a number of parties. Rosemary is a wild child with a troubled past, who would love to publicly embarrass her father. When a robbery at a liquor store occurs, the tape shows Rosemary, holding a gun, robbing the clerk, while Bob timidly guards the door.

The story is loosely based on the Patty Hearst case of the same era. Patty, a daughter of publishing mogul Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a self-styled left-wing revolutionary group, which she later joined. She was convicted of bank robbery and served time in prison, but is still thought by many to have been a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, in which the kidnapped bond closely with their captors.

In this series Mosley––with some humor and without lecturing or excessive bitterness––presents clearly the difficulty of living in America as a second-class citizen. In each of the Easy Rawlins books, my blood pressure spikes several times at the casual dismissiveness or outright cruelty of bigotry. They are not the most comfortable reads for an empathetic person, but the perspective always gives me something to think about. Mosley's plots are complicated, but tightly woven. His characters are vivid, and after several books I feel that I know them. For those reading Easy Rawlins for the first time, this is not the best place to start; each book in the series builds on the network of friends and obligations that Easy established in earlier books. For those of us who remember those times, Rose Gold is tightly-woven, bittersweet reminder of a turbulent and exhilarating era.

Note: I received a free copy of Rose Gold for review.

Fall Preview 2014: Part Four

Here we are again, previewing books. It's a fun time for us Material Witnesses because as we're spotting promising books for ourselves, we're also assessing books for each other. There's a World War II book for Sister Mary. Noir? Georgette. I bet Peri would like that one by Karin Fossum. And that European police procedural? It has the Maltese Condor's name all over it. Among the five of us, I hope we're showing you some books that are up your alley, too.

Recently, I've been watching the TV series The Americans. It's set in the 1980s and concerns two Soviet KGB officers. They're posing as a married couple, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, living in suburban Washington, DC with their kids. More than a story about spies, The Americans is the story of these two Russians and their marriage. (Sister Mary wrote about the first season of the series here.)

Chinese-American novelist Ha Jin (pen name of Xuefei Jin) uses an espionage novel, A Map of Betrayal (Pantheon, November 4), in a similar way. He examines Gary Shang's divided loyalties in both love and politics. Shang loves China, where he was born and married. He also loves the United States, where he has an American wife, a daughter, Lilian, a trusted Chinese-American mistress––and a job as a Chinese mole at the CIA.

The book is narrated by the adult Lilian, who received her father's diaries from his mistress after her parents' deaths. Lilian knows the US convicted her father of treason, but she knows nothing of his previous existence in China. A Map of Betrayal follows two story lines written from two different perspectives: Gary Shang's life, as he lived it, and Lilian's attempts to learn about it after his death. Ha Jin is a masterful writer about conflicted individuals (in Waiting, for example, a man waits 18 years to divorce his wife because he loves another and, once divorced, isn't happy about it). This one sounds both complex and moving.

Many of us love books set in the world of books, in which the characters are librarians, writers, publishers, booksellers or obsessional readers. Here's one like that. The Forgers will be published by Mysterious Press on November 4th. Its author, Bradford Morrow, is known for his gothic tales about troubled (and troubling) people. From the beginning, we're unsure how much we can trust the narrator, Will. He tells us he was a gifted forger of 19th-century manuscripts and signatures, but that life was behind him when Adam Diehl is found, dead and his hands severed, surrounded by his collection of rare manuscripts and books.

Will's efforts to create a new life with Adam's sister, Meghan, are hampered when he receives threatening letters apparently written by authors from the grave. I doubt The Forgers is as wonderfully bizarre as Marcel Theroux's Strange Bodies (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 2014), in which letters penned by English literary figure Dr. Samuel Johnson are found on modern paper in 21st-century London. Still, it looks good to me.

No one familiar with Ruth Rendell's writing will look at the cover of her upcoming stand-alone, The Girl Next Door (Scribner, October 7), and expect something lovely in that battered tin. No matter if she's writing about Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, stand-alones or dark psychological suspense pseudonymously as Barbara Vine, Rendell sees evil simmering under the surface of everyday suburbia.

Construction work unearthed the tin box containing a pair of mismatched hands on Essex property where children played in underground tunnels during World War II. After a police inspector tracks them down, the now-elderly friends get together to investigate their childhood secrets. Among the amateur investigators are Alan and his wife, Rosemary; widowed Daphne, whom Alan once loved; Michael, whose mother disappeared and who now considers getting together with his distant father; and Lewis, whose Uncle James was occasionally in the tunnels before he too disappeared. While thinking about this novel, I pictured the final scene of the movie Deliverance, in which Ed awakens screaming from a nightmare when a dead hand reaches above the surface of a lake. A recurring theme in mystery fiction is the decades-old crime solved when it reaches into the present. There's something artistically pleasing about it reaching with a long-dead hand. Or two.

Let's set aside the morality of a career murdering people and think about it in purely practical terms. The job stress would drive me totally bonkers and I'm curious about people who become pro killers and what they do if they live long enough to retire (see Who Ya Gonna Call? here). Don Winslow's Frank Machianno surfs and sells fish in San Diego now that he's no longer Frankie Machine, the Mafia's efficient killer (The Winter of Frankie Machine). In Lenny Kleinfeld's hip and hilarious Shooters & Chasers, a crew of killers is headed by Arthur Reid, a wine connoisseur whose retirement goal is owning a vineyard that supplies a great red for a White House state dinner.

Tod Goldberg's Gangsterland (Counterpoint, September 9) features a Chicago Outfit killer, Sal Cupertino, who might feel at home with Kleinfeld's eccentric characters. Sal longs to be reunited with his wife and toddler and simply disappear. But he messed up and killed three FBI agents and the feds are now on his trail. After Sal undergoes several plastic surgeries and does a lot of studying, the crime syndicate resurrects him in Las Vegas, where they expect his help in an organized crime scheme operating out of a local synagogue, of all places. Yes, Sal is now Rabbi David Cohen, who delivers rabbinical homilies sprinkled with lyrics from Springsteen. Goldberg's book is earning reviewers' praise, including this verdict from Kirkus: "Clever plotting, a colorful cast of characters and priceless situations make this comedic crime novel an instant classic."

Ha Jin isn't the only writer on my fall books-to-read list to explore the topics of love and betrayal. David Bezmozgis wrote his book, The Betrayers (Little, Brown, September 23), before Gaza erupted this summer, but his themes of patriotism, sacrifice, ultimate truth, what it means to be a moral man and the double-edged nature of deeply-held principles are timeless.

The book is set over the course of a day in August 2013. A smear campaign targeting Israeli politician Baruch Kotler, who supports West Bank settlements, causes the married Kotler and his much-younger mistress, Leora, to flee to a Crimean resort town Kotler remembers from his childhood. A surprise for Kotler awaits at the house the couple has rented. The owner is Chaim Tankilevich, the friend who betrayed Kotler to the KGB four decades earlier. Kotler was sentenced to 13 years in a gulag. Both men have suffered in the past, and both struggle with issues now. In a settling of scores, who owes what to whom?

I'm thinking about recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and what they say about race relations in the US as I add Walter Mosley's Rose Gold (Doubleday, September 23) to my list of fall books. It's 13th in the series about Easy Rawlins, a World War II vet who moved from Texas to Los Angeles in the late 1940s. Easy opened a "research and delivery" office because, as a black man, he was unable to obtain a private detective's license. Over the years, white city leaders have consulted him when they need a bridge to the black community. In exchange, Easy received a PI license, but there is still only one white cop Easy trusts.

Mosley is a gifted storyteller, and Easy is about as engaging a narrator as you could possibly meet. Through his observations and experiences, he delivers a picture of what life is like for a street-smart but honorable and hard-working black man in Los Angeles from the late '40s to 1967. That's the year he purposefully runs his car off the road (Blonde Faith, 2007). Several months later, he's out of a coma and searching for a missing young man among hippies on Sunset Strip (Little Green, 2013; see review here). In Rose Gold, it's still 1967. Easy juggles several cases at once, including one for Roger Frisk, assistant to the chief of police. Frisk asks Easy to find Rosemary Goldsmith, daughter of a weapons manufacturer. She has disappeared from her UC Santa Barbara dorm and there's a question of whether a black ex-boxer, who changed his name to Uhuru Nolica and leads the revolutionary group Scorched Earth, is involved. The feds and other LA cops try to warn off Easy but good luck with that. As usual, Easy will trade favors and use his head to clear things up. Having Easy for company in a case with shades of Patty Hearst spells an irresistible read.

I'm fascinated by people (and fictional characters) who refuse to be shackled by society's expectations. I recently enjoyed Erin Lindsay McCabe's I Shall Be Near to You (Crown, January 2014) about one such woman. When her husband, Jeremiah Wakefield, joins the Union Army, Rosetta Edwards won't hear of staying home. She becomes "Ross Stone" and fights in the American Civil War at his side with other volunteers from rural New York who keep her secret. This book is based on letters home by women who actually fought in the Civil War.

Rosetta Edwards doesn't want her husband to enlist, and I Shall Be Near to You is primarily a love story. In contrast, in Laird Hunt's Neverhome (Little, Brown, September 9), narrator Constance Thompson feels so strongly about supporting the Union cause she enlists as "Ash" Thompson while her husband, Bartholomew, stays home on their Indiana farm. She's a crack shot and fits in with the men until she's betrayed by someone she thought she could trust. Reviewers' raves compare Neverhome to Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, but describe Constance's journey as her own. Publishers Weekly says, "Hunt’s characterization of Constance transcends simplistic distinctions between male and female, good and bad. The language of her narration is triumphant as well: sometimes blunt, sometimes visionary, and always fascinating."

I'll give you a few of the steps I went through to research Robert Jackson Bennett's book, City of Stairs (Broadway Books/Random House paperback original, September 9), about intelligence officer Shara Komayd's investigation of the politically explosive murder of academic Efrem Pangyui in the city of Bulikov.

I read the publisher's blurb ("A densely atmospheric and intrigue-filled fantasy novel of living spies, dead gods, buried histories, and a mysterious, ever-changing city—from one of America’s most acclaimed young SF writers"), Georgette's post about a previous Robert Jackson Bennett book, American Elsewhere, and a starred Library Journal review of City of Stairs. It states, in part, "The world Bennett (The Troupe; American Elsewhere) has constructed is a complex political landscape of a subjugated people holding onto the memories of their glory days and protective gods and the conquerors reaping revenge for their own previous subjugation. An excellent spy story wrapped in a vivid imaginary world." This book is definitely for me. Is it also for you?

Next week, I'll tell you about more fall books I'm excited about. Tomorrow, we'll see some other books that caught Georgette's eye.

Review of Walter Mosley's Little Green

Little Green by Walter Mosley

On Monday, our country celebrated the life and achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights leader assassinated on April 4, 1968. Were Dr. King alive today, I think he'd share my enjoyment of some novels about the struggle for equality: Attica Locke's Black Water Rising (Harper, 2009), which delves into the campus protest movement past of a young black lawyer who is placed in jeopardy later, when he and his wife witness a murder. James McBride's The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group USA, 2013), about abolitionist John Brown, was reviewed here.

I don't doubt King would appreciate Ezekiel Porterhouse Rawlins, the black Walter Mosley character who fought in World War II and moved from Houston, Texas, to Los Angeles, where he opens an office with a sign on the door that says "EASY RAWLINS—RESEARCH AND DELIVERY." Years later, the sign stays the same, but Easy obtains a valid PI license after he's earned the grudging respect of the Los Angeles chief of police, who sees him as a bridge to L.A.'s black community.

I thought we had seen the last of Easy when he takes an intentional, drunken drive off a cliff on the Pacific Coast Highway in 2007's Blonde Faith. When Easy tells us, "I came half-awake, dead and dreaming" to begin Mosley's twelfth series book, Little Green (Doubleday, 2013), it's two months later in 1967. Easy has no sooner staggered out of his coma when one of the most feared men in Los Angeles, his best friend, Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, asks for a favor. Nineteen-year-old Evander "Little Green" Noon had gone to the Sunset Strip, where he called his mother, Timbale, to tell her he'd met a hippie woman and would come home after they'd gone to a club to listen to music. Evander never reappeared and Ray, who feels responsible for the boy since killing his father, asks Easy to find him.

Fortified by swigs of healer Mama Jo's elixir, Gator's Blood (read about how it affects Easy's body and soul and then tell me you wouldn't kill to get your hands on some), Easy tracks Evander's path through Los Angeles's Summer of Love. Easy is aided by a young female hippie, Ray and other friends such as Martin Martins, Jackson Blue and Frenchman Jean-Paul Villard. While the missing-person hunt and the extortion case Easy handles at the request of Blue are interesting, what makes Little Green and the entire Easy Rawlins series unique is its narrator, a good and tough black man, who shares his existential thinking, guides us through his black community and shows us how a black man in 1950s and '60s Los Angeles handles interactions with whites.

There is one white cop Easy trusts: Detective Melvin Suggs––but most white Los Angeles cops can't be trusted by blacks on sight. As Easy shows Evander's picture to people on the Strip, he's reminded of black towns in Mississippi and Louisiana, where workers gathered to drink homemade liquor, dance, laugh and cry because they were under the thumb of racism. He says the hippies on the Strip feel under the gun, too. They are outraged by Vietnam and ostracized because of their clothes and habits. Unlike people in older times, they feel they can change the world that tries to hold them down. After some whites come to intervene when cops hassle him and another black man on a street corner, and another white sticks up for him during a dispute in a diner, Easy feels hopeful:

When the Watts Riots had ended I saw the divisions form among the nonwhite races of L.A. I'd also seen a split in our own community, where brother turned against brother and corrupt city officials stepped in to take their revenge. But in that hippie diner there was the hint of something hopeful. There were white people realizing for the first time what it was like to be shunned and segregated, fired for no reason and arrested because of the way they looked.

It's an insightful trip back to 1967 with Easy. He might have driven off a cliff in one world, only to wake up in the beginning of a new world.

Review of Walter Mosley's All I Did Was Shoot My Man

All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley

Today is a national holiday. We pay respect to the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., the American clergyman and Nobel Peace Prize winner who advocated nonviolent civil disobedience in the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. I wish he were alive today to see Barack Obama sworn in for his second term as United States President.

Walter Mosley
photo by David Burnett

I think about the course of the Civil Rights Movement when I read books by Walter Mosley, whose characters deal with racism. Mosley is best known for his Easy Rawlins series, set in Los Angeles, but he has several other excellent series, stand-alone books about crime, and other fiction. The Mosley book I read most recently is All I Did Was Shoot My Man, fourth in the Leonid McGill series. It was published in 2012 by Riverhead Books/Penguin Group (USA) and is a 2013 Edgar Award for Best Mystery finalist.

The childhood of book narrator Leonid Trotter McGill was disrupted when his anarchist father abandoned his New York City family to fight in a South American revolution. LT's mother died of a broken heart. His brother Nikita took to crime and is now in prison for robbery. LT, an ex-boxer, was once an expert in altering evidence to contaminate a criminal investigation. He planted evidence, changed phone records or forged documents to direct suspicion to an innocent party. Sometimes the people LT framed went to prison, but most often he created enough doubt for the district attorney to drop the case. He is now trying to give up his bent life and is working as a private investigator for his own agency. He has valuable resources in both criminal circles and law enforcement. Before last year, he even had his own Javert in the form of Carson Kitteridge, a cop whose mission was to bring LT, suspected of "everything from contract murder to armed robbery, from kidnapping to white slavery," to justice. Kitteridge still has his eye on LT and gives him a hard time, but he and his colleagues have finally backed off.

When All I Did Was Shoot My Man begins, LT is trying to help Zella Grisham, freshly released from prison. One day, Zella had gone home sick from work to find her boyfriend Harry Tangelo in bed with her best friend, Minnie Lesser. Zella grabbed a gun and shot Harry three times. Harry survived and the court would probably have been lenient had someone not called the police to suggest they check Zella's journal in her padlocked storage unit. In the unit was evidence linking her to the $58 million robbery of Wall Street's Rutgers Assurance Corporation. Zella insisted she knew nothing about the robbery. LT knows she's innocent because he'd been hired to plant the evidence. LT felt bad framing the pregnant Zella, so he subtly altered the false evidence. Eight years later, LT got a windfall from a grateful client and called attorney Breland Lewis to suggest the planted evidence be reexamined. As a result, Zella left prison.

Zella's freedom rekindles the robbery investigation by the police and Rutgers Assurance. LT becomes involved when Zella asks him to find the baby she gave up for adoption and to track down Harry so she can apologize. Although LT doesn't know who masterminded the robbery, he and his own family are threatened when people peripherally connected to the crime begin dying.

Mosley is a fine writer and storyteller who uses the backdrop of crime to examine his fully-realized characters. LT is compassionate and capable of self-scrutiny. His struggles with his temper and the past, and his attempts to do the right thing by others, are woven into his investigation. Even before this new danger, his family was unraveling. His wife has tried time and again to find another man so she can leave him. Currently, she drinks herself into a stupor. His oldest son, gentle Dimitri, has moved out to live with the dangerous Tatyana Baranovich. Daughter Shelly is dating a much older man. LT has talked his hip youngest son, Twill, into joining his detective agency, and sets him to work on an investigation involving a rich man's son who has fallen in with bad companions. A lover who left LT wants to return, and there's a chance his father didn't die in that South American revolution after all. There are many balls for LT to juggle in All I Did Was Shoot My Man.

On the day that we remember Martin Luther King, Jr., I wish we could say racism was a thing of the past. Unfortunately, we can't but I like what LT says about it:

I'm a twenty-first-century New Yorker and therefore have little time to contemplate race. It's not that racism doesn't exist. Lots of people in New York, and elsewhere, hate because of color and gender, religion and national origin. It's just that I rarely worry about those things because there's a real world underneath all that nonsense; a world that demands my attention almost every moment of every day. 

Racism is a luxury in a world where resources are scarce, where economic competition is an armed sport, in a world where even the atmosphere is plotting against you. In an arena like that racism is more a halftime entertainment, a favorite sitcom when the day is done.

This book, with its complex story line and memorable characters, is a very satisfying read.