Books by Walter Mosley and Complete Book Reviews

Walter Mosley, Author W. W. Norton & Company $19.95 (284p) ISBN 978-0-393-02998-7
Mosley's second novel (after Devil in a Blue Dress ) confirms the advent of an extraordinary storyteller. It is five years after the events detailed in the first novel and Easy Rawlins has used the stolen money he kept back in 1948 to purchase a...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Black Classic $19.95 (165p) ISBN 978-1-57478-043-7
Mosley, best known for his gritty Easy Rawlins mysteries, explores cosmic questions of justice and redemption in this odd tale of Tempest Landry, a black man shot dead by police when they thought he was pulling a gun. Landry throws the afterlife...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Basic Civitas $23 (269p) ISBN 978-0-465-00525-3
A history of terrible violence including rape and murder followed by 27 years of incarceration in a prison with its own codified violence have helped shape Socrates Fortlow, previously featured in two short story collections, Always Outnumbered,...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Riverhead $25.95 (305p) ISBN 978-1-59448-858-0
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...
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Walter Mosley, Author Riverhead $25.95 (325p) ISBN 978-1-59448-752-1
Bestseller Mosley scores a clean knockout in his excellent second mystery featuring New York City PI Leonid McGill (after 2009’s The Long Fall ). Still striving to atone for some of the lives he’s ruined, the 54-year-old McGill laments...
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Walter Mosley, Author W.W. Norton & Company, Inc $19.95 (255p) ISBN 978-0-393-03644-2
It ain't easy being Easy. Especially not now, as Mosley ( White Butterfly ) brings his much-admired, reluctant L.A. sleuth, Easy Rawlins, to the cusp of the 1960s without his wife and daughter, his real estate riches or the hopes and ambitions that...
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Walter Mosley, Author W.W. Norton & Company, Inc $23 (304p) ISBN 978-0-393-03924-5
Easy Rawlins is back (after his last appearance in Black Betty), which is great news for readers intrigued by Mosley's noir L.A. settings and his resourceful, street-smart hero. It's the early 1960s, and Easy has settled for a quiet, respectable...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Little, Brown $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-316-59238-3
Abandoning the voice of his premier creation, Easy Rawlins, Mosley mines a new shaft of 1950s Los Angeles with a hero who combines the principles of Easy with the deadliness of Ray "Mouse" Alexander. The result is a violent, heroic and...
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Walter Mosley. Doubleday, $25.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-385-53598-4
In 2007’s Blonde Faith, set in 1967, Easy Rawlins drove drunkenly off a cliff in what his creator indicated was likely his last appearance. Now, after two months of sliding in and out of consciousness, Easy begins the long journey back to the living,
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Walter Mosley, Author Black Classic Press $16.95 (124p) ISBN 978-1-57478-020-8
This impassioned essay urges black Americans to take the lead in shaping America's response to the September 11 attacks. Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins mystery series, puts forth a radical critique of U.S. foreign policy, recalling U.S....
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Walter Mosley, Author W. W. Norton & Company $19.95 (219p) ISBN 978-0-393-02854-6
This jaunty crime novel, set in L.A. in 1948, introduces Ezekiel ``Easy'' Rawlins, a recently laid-off mechanic who is young, black and--but for the need to meet the mortgage on his new house--a most reluctant sleuth. Easy hails originally from the...
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Walter Mosley. Doubleday, $25.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-385-52618-0
A pornographic actress, Debbie Dare, comes to terms with her past after her husband’s death, in Mosely’s shocking but ultimately flat 43rd book. Here, the author forgoes the well-plotted mystery genre he’s staked his name on; his latest novel finds...
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Walter Mosley. Tor, $24.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7653-3010-9
The unevenness of Mosley’s Crosstown to Oblivion series continues in the third pair of unconvincing novellas (after Merge/Disciple). “Stepping Stone” is the more compelling piece, relating the experiences of Truman Pope, a man who overcame learning...
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Walter Mosley. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, $9.99 e-book (279p) ISBN 978-0-345-80444-0
Many of Mosley's heroes are men who are or have been brutal and are certainly still dangerous—men like Fearless Jones, Leonid McGill, Easy Rawlins, and Easy's friend, Raymond "Mouse" Alexander—and all have their redeeming qualities. Xavier "Ecks"...
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Walter Mosley, Author W. W. Norton & Company $22 (267p) ISBN 978-0-393-03802-6
After four increasingly well-received crime novels starring Los Angeles PI Easy Rawlins, Mosley has moved strongly ahead to a more searching and deeply felt style and subject. He writes here of Atwater ``Soupspoon'' Wise, a battered, failing relic...
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Walter Mosley, Author Black Classic Press $22 (208p) ISBN 978-1-57478-025-3
Mosley's sixth Easy Rawlins novel is the chronological first--and less mystery or crime fiction than a powerfully raw, lyrical coming-of-age story. Here is 19-year-old Easy in 1939 before his war experiences and before his departure from Houston for
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Walter Mosley, Author Pocket Books $6.5 (336p) ISBN 978-0-671-88429-1
Easy Rawlins's affair with a schoolteacher embroils him in murder. (July)
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Walter Mosley, Author Little Brown and Company $23 (208p) ISBN 978-0-393-04539-0
Unveiling a new, bigger-than-life urban hero and a new series set in an updated version of Easy Rawlins's South Central Los Angeles, Mosley seems determined to confer on the mean streets of contemporary L.A. what filmmaker John Ford helped create...
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Walter Mosley, Author Ballantine Books $17.95 (128p) ISBN 978-0-345-43069-4
Mosley, the author of the popular and critically acclaimed Easy Rawlins mystery series and other novels, issues an ardent manifesto that addresses the political and economic ""chains that define our range of motion and our ability to reach for the...
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Walter Mosley. Tor, $24.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7653-3008-6
While Mosley is best known for his Easy Rawlins mystery series, this “double” of two short novels demonstrates his proficiency with high-quality speculative fiction and are equally accessible to mystery and fantasy readers. In “The Gift of Fire,”...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Bloomsbury $23.95 (192p) ISBN 978-1-59691-397-4
In this short, intense roman dur (or “serious novel”), Mosley probes the human condition through Ben Dibbuk, a black man whose name evokes the dybbuk of Jewish folklore. A 47-year-old computer programmer for a New York City bank, Dibbuk
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Walter Mosley, Author . Warner $24.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-446-52954-9
After the qualified success of his first science fiction novel, Blue Light (1998), Mosley (best known for such mystery fiction as the Easy Rawlins series) returns with nine linked short stories set in a grim, cyberpunkish near-future. Unfortunately,
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Walter Mosley. Doubleday, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-385-53920-3
Set in 1968, MWA Grand Master Mosley’s excellent 14th Easy Rawlins mystery (after 2014’s Rose Gold) finds the favor-dealing L.A. PI working as a partner in the WRENS-L Detective Agency, which combines his initials with those of his two partners. A...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Little, Brown $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-316-07301-1
Finally. Five years after the last taste (1997's Gone Fishin') and six years after the last full meal (1996's A Little Yellow Dog), Easy Rawlins makes a very welcome return. Now 44 years old, Easy no longer makes a living from doing...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Atria $24 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7434-4252-7
Fans of Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries received a bonus when Washington Square recently reissued in trade paper the six novels that preceded the latest one, Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002). Each reprint contained an original short story featuring...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Little, Brown $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-316-59112-6
In this eagerly anticipated follow-up to Fearless Jones (2001), Watts bookstore owner Paris Minton and the dangerous but principled Fearless Jones tread the familiar territory mapped so successfully by Mosley's original detecting duo, Easy...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Little, Brown $22.95 (249p) ISBN 978-0-316-57082-4
Even in his genre fiction, which includes mysteries (the Easy Rawlins, Fearless Jones and Socrates Fortlaw series) and SF (Blue Light , etc.), Mosley has not been content simply to spin an engrossing action story but has sought to explore larger...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Little, Brown $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-316-07303-5
Set during the Watts riots of 1965, this eighth entry in Mosley's acclaimed Easy Rawlins series (Bad Boy Brawly Brown , etc.) demonstrates the reach and power of the genre, combining a deeply involving mystery with vigorous characterizations and
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Walter Mosley. Doubleday, $26.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-385-53918-0
Leonid McGill slogs his way through a morass of personal and professional problems in Mosley's outstanding fifth mystery featuring the New York City PI (after 2012's All I Did Was Shoot My Man). People giving him trouble include a modern-day Fagin,...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Little, Brown $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-316-11035-8
This thought-provoking, genre-bending account of one slave's emancipation, Mosley's (Fear Itself ) first book for young adults, makes for harrowing reading. The narrator, called simply by his number, 47, recalls his life as an enslaved teen...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Little, Brown $24.95 (312p) ISBN 978-0-316-07302-8
As shown in the superb 10th entry in Mosley's Easy Rawlins series (Devil in a Blue Dress , etc.), Easy's progress is never smooth and his achievements (responsible job, son and daughter both flowering, loving woman in his house, friends and...
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Walter Mosley. Tor, $25.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7653-7521-6
In this terrific genre-defying work, Mosley (Rose Gold) uses an eons-old battle for control of existence as a backdrop for a character-driven novel of philosophy and social commentary. Ages ago, the Laz created the Silver Box to inflict torture on...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Warner Aspect $22.95 (209p) ISBN 978-0-446-53363-8
Bestseller Mosley's latest foray into allegorical SF is reminiscent of his 1998 novel, Blue Light , but it isn't nearly as rich and captivating. How should the book's hero, Errol, react when his late, beloved father reappears as a...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Nation $12.95 (103p) ISBN 978-1-56025-846-9
The isolation and ineffectuality of the American left is lamented in this brooding, somewhat unfocused cri de coeur. Writing primarily for an African-American audience, novelist Mosley (the Easy Rawlins mystery series) argues that today's...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Little, Brown $23.95 (313p) ISBN 978-0-316-11471-4
White Los Angeles heart surgeon Minas Nolan, a very recent widower, meets African-American flower-shop employee Branwyn Beerman when her son Thomas is born prematurely with a hole in his lung, and without a father in his life. Minas has a son, Eric,
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Walter Mosley, Author . Little, Brown $25.99 (308p) ISBN 978-0-316-73458-5
Though the prose is a bit rough in spots, Mosley's third outing for L.A. bookseller Paris Minton and the intrepid Fearless Jones is as entertaining as its predecessors, Fearless Jones and Fear Itself . Trouble comes to Paris's door in the...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Bloomsbury $23.95 (280p) ISBN 978-1-59691-226-7
Mosley returns from the vastly underrated Fortunate Son and from Fear of the Dark with a piece of what one might call "deep erotica": there's plenty of sex, and also plenty of motivation for it within protagonist Cordel Carmel's...
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Walter Mosley, Author . Little, Brown $25.99 (308p) ISBN 978-0-316-73459-2
Set in 1967, Mosley's brilliant 10th Easy Rawlins thriller finds the middle-aged Easy still fighting some of the same battles he fought in his first outing, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990), as an angry young WWII vet trying to make his home in...
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Walter Mosley. Doubleday, $25.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-385-53597-7
Set in L.A. during the height of the Vietnam War, Mosley’s impressive 13th Easy Rawlins mystery (after 2013’s Little Green) finds Roger Frisk, special assistant to the police chief, calling on Easy with a job. Rosemary Goldsmith, a student at the...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Paul Winfield, Read by Hachette Audio $17.98 (0p) ISBN 978-1-57042-710-7
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...
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Walter Mosley. Tor, $24.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7653-3009-3
Heavy-handed and often ponderous, Mosley’s second volume of paired Crosstown to Oblivion novellas (after The Gift of Fire/On the Head of a Pin) doesn’t hold a candle to his subtle and nuanced crime fiction. In “Merge,” the Earth is invaded by beings
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Walter Mosley, read by J.D. Jackson. Random House Audio, , unabridged, 9 CDs, 11 hrs., $40 ISBN 978-0-385-36226-9
Set in 1967 Los Angeles, with the Vietnam War dominating the news, the latest book featuring Mosley’s beloved Easy Rawlins finds the private eye interrupted from settling in to his upscale new home by an increasing number of intriguing missing-person
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Walter Mosley, read by Prentice Onayemi. Random House Audio, unabridged, 7 CDs, 9 hrs., $40 ISBN 978-0-553-55107-5
Like the four Leonid McGill novels that have preceded it, this one has Mosley’s empathic and overworked New York private eye solving problems both professional and personal. His work includes the search for an heiress and assisting a woman who’s...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Michael Pietsch, Editor Little Brown and Company $35 (272p) ISBN 978-0-316-96620-7
Mosley can readily manage more than one empathetic series hero, and in Socrates Fortlow, introduced in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, he has a winner. Socrates is a former jailbird doing his best to go straight in a seamy Los Angeles full of...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Michael Pietsch, Editor Little Brown and Company $30 (304p) ISBN 978-0-316-57098-5
You have to admire Mosley: with a gilt-edged brand-name character (Easy Rawlins)in his locker, he still can't resist venturing off in new directions. Sometimes his effort to break new ground works beautifully, as in RL's Dream; sometimes it's an...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Tim Cain, Read by , read by Tim Cain. HighBridge Audio $29.95 (0p) ISBN 978-1-59887-009-1
When Errol's long-dead father calls him in the middle of the night, Errol learns about "the Wave," a billion-year-old organism slowly creeping to Earth's surface and reanimating corpses into healthy vibrant replicas of their former...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Richard Allen, Read by , read by Richard Allen. Tantor $24.99 (0p) ISBN 978-1-4001-0638-7
A taut and suspenseful thriller that follows Ben Dibbuk as he unravels a mysterious plot against him initiated by his own wife, Mosley's latest effort is captivating. Richard Allen's reading, however, is not quite suitable—not...
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Walter Mosley, read by Mirron Willis. Penguin Audio, unabridged, seven CDs, 8.5 hrs., $29.95 ISBN 978-0-14-242895-5
Mosley's most recent series hero, New York City PI Leonid McGill, is perhaps his most complex—intelligent and surprisingly thoughtful and philosophic for a man of action. Mirron Willis conveys McGill's every mood; his timbre, clarity, and precise...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Richard Allen, Read by , read by Richard Allen. Brilliance Audio $32.95 (0p) ISBN 978-1-58788-985-1
Although Allen brings a distinctly human touch to a cold world of computers and corporations, his relaxed style seems ill suited for these nine interconnected stories set in the near future. The frenetic material should be bristling with tension,...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Michael Boatman, Read by , read by Michael Boatman. Hachette Audio $31.95 (0p) ISBN 978-1-60024-042-3
Mosley's Easy Rawlins books were always about acquiring property, which was the American dream in post–WWII Los Angeles. But lately Rawlins's expanding family has taken center stage and death has darkened the landscape. “We born dyin.' If it...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Michael Boatman, Read by , read by Michael Boatman. Time Warner Audiobooks $31.98 (0p) ISBN 978-1-59483-035-8
It isn't an easy job for an actor to bring to audio life all the many facets of Mosley's Easy Rawlins—the street smarts and survival skills that make him a good detective; the devoted family man who works as a junior high school...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Michael Boatman, Read by , read by Michael Boatman. Time Warner Audiobooks $34.98 (0p) ISBN 978-1-58621-660-3
Admirably performed by reader Boatman, this audiobook—the latest in Mosley's series featuring Los Angeles PI Easy Rawlins (A Red Death , etc.)—picks up immediately after the Watts riots of 1965. It is a time of change, and Rawlins...
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Walter Mosley, read by Michael Boatman. Random House Audio, 10 hrs., $40 ISBN 978-0-7352-0872-8
MWA Grand Master Mosley’s 14th Easy Rawlins mystery finds the unconventional, now middle-aged PI at the tail end of L.A.’s Swinging 60s, struggling with a broken heart (his wife-to-be opts for a return to her former partner), racist cops, crooked...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Kevin Ryan, Editor Pocket Books $6.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-671-51142-5
Reissue of the first book in Moseley's Easy Rawlins mystery series, in which Easy is hired to track down a woman who disappeared with someone else's money. (Oct.)
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Walter Mosley, Author, Howard Weinberger, Read by , read by Howard Weinberger. Audio Renaissance $38 (0p) ISBN 978-1-55927-722-8
"You had to kill someone white to get any kind of news splash in the '60s," Easy Rawlins says of Los Angeles. In this fifth installment in the Easy Rawlins series, Mosley has allowed his character to evolve with age (the first book in...
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Walter Mosley, Author, Lorraine Toussaint, Read by Hachette Audio $31.98 (0p) ISBN 978-1-59483-219-2
Toussaint's honeyed voice, flecked with the slightest undertone of grit, is lovely but forbidding, the sound of effortless social grace underscored by the threat of steely authority at the slightest provocation. Sounding much like actress Alfre...
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Walter Mosley. Mullholland, $27 (336p) ISBN 978-0-316-50964-0
Former NYPD detective Joe King Oliver, now the owner-operator of King Detective Service, investigates two cases of gross injustice in this excellent standalone from MWA Grand Master Mosley (Charcoal Joe and 13 other Easy Rawlins novels). Thirteen...
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Walter Mosley. Atlantic Monthly, $26 (384p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2841-6
In Mosley’s offbeat and insightful novel (following Down the River unto the Sea), 16-year-old New Yorker Cornelius “CC” Jones—the brilliant son of an Italian-American flirt and an older black autodidact—spends his evenings in the early 1990s working
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Walter Mosley, read by Dion Graham. Hachette Audio, , 6 CDs, 7.5 hrs., $35 ISBN 978-1-4789-7631-8
Graham’s low, whispery voice is a perfect match for the protagonist of Mosley’s standalone about a former NYPD detective turned private eye whose police career unraveled after he served nine months in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Joe King...
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Walter Mosley. Grove, $23 (128p) ISBN 978-0-8021-4763-9
Drawing on a prolific and successful crime fiction career, Mosley (John Woman) returns to elucidating the author’s craft, after 2007’s This Year You Write Your Novel, in this compact but insight-rich monograph. He addresses plot structure, character
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Walter Mosley. Mulholland, $24 (176p) ISBN 978-0-316-49113-6
In MWA Grand Master Mosley’s easy-reading sixth Leonid McGill mystery (after 2015’s And Sometimes I Wonder About You), the PI moseys around contemporary New York City from one repartee-filled scene to another. Black blues player Catfish Worry wants
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Walter Mosley. Mulholland, $27 (336p) ISBN 978-0-316-49118-1
Early in MWA Grand Master Mosley’s strong 15th Easy Rawlins mystery (after 2016’s Charcoal Joe), Craig Kilian, a vet traumatized by combat experiences in Vietnam, arrives unannounced one day in 1969 at the L.A. detective agency that employs Easy....
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Walter Mosley. Little, Brown, $28 (336p) ISBN 978-0-316-46021-7
The tendency of PI Joe King Oliver, a former New York City cop, to take on two cases at once lands him in hot water in Edgar winner Mosley’s entertaining sequel to 2018’s Down the River unto the Sea. When his grandmother’s billionaire boyfriend asks
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Walter Mosley. Mulholland, $30 (352p) ISBN 978-0-316-49111-2
Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins tackles a multilayered missing persons case in the wistful 16th installment of Mosley’s bestselling series (after Blood Grove). When Amethystine Stoller walks into Easy’s L.A. office looking for her ex-husband, Curt—a forensic
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ARTICLES
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  • PW Talks with Walter Mosley
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