Revisiting a long-admired author

Long ago, just after Bill Clinton had been elected president, he called Walter Mosley one of his favorite authors.

I remember thinking, "Walter who?" Then I went out and got a copy of Devil in a Blue Dress. I was hooked and read many more of his books. Then Mosley spoiled me in 1997 by writing Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. It was so good, I nearly stopped reading Mosely's books. He's written over 30 books since '97. I've probably read three or four.

Half Price Books had a Mosley book on the shelf for $5.00. That's less than the cost of a paperback these days. I went for it. The book is All I Did Was Shoot My Man, A Leonid McGill Mystery.

The book jacket touts this as "a tale about what it means to be a family." Family has been a vital part of all the Mosely books I've read and Leonid McGill's family is diverse, troubled, and loosely bound. The woman who hires him, a private detective, to answer some old questions is part of a family that includes her late husband, the man she may have shot.

Mosley

Like the other Mosley main characters I've read about, McGill is nearly overwhelmed by the events and troubles his family gets involved in. It's difficult for me to imagine how this guy functions from day to day. Somehow, in Mosley's story telling, McGill does function and survive, although not always happily.

My imagination may not be adequate to understand everything in the story. After all, I'm an old white guy from small town Minnesota. Mosley could pull the wool over my eyes without half trying as he writes about New York City and the former small time "fixer" that McGill is. But somehow I trust Mosley's perceptions and story telling. This was a good story well told. Check it out at a library near you (or ask for my copy).

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• The author's web site

• "In 'Shoot My Man,' Mosley Tells Tale Of Atonement," an interview on NPR

• James H. Burnett III's review in the Boston Globe

• Review in The Independent: All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley...

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How old a favorite?

I first read a book by Walter Mosley when a newly elected President Clinton was photographed carrying a copy. How long ago was that? 1993? Holy cow! 21 years ago? Just 21 years? It's in that ambiguous time period that seems a lifetime ago, but a fairly recent lifetime. I had been teaching for 25 years by then. But where have the last 20 years gone?

Mosley

While I have liked most of Mosley's books, my favorite is still Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. I wrote about it in 2002 and reprinted that five years later.

At the community used book sale, I picked up a 2011 novel by Mosley, When the Thrill is Gone. It's another story about the life and world of Leonard McGill.

Following in the footsteps of many hard-boiled writers of hard-boiled detective novels, Mosley offers a tour of a very complicated and dangerous world. It's not quite the alternate universe of post-WWII Los Angeles that he used to write about, but it's very alternate to the my small town Minnesota world.

The characters are alternately attractive, repulsive, obvious, and enigmatic. The story moved along and never left me behind. I might well offer Mosley an improbability award, but there are too many parts of his world that I cannot evaluate. At times it was like reading science fiction.*

I liked reading When the Thrill is Gone. If I find another of Mosley's books at the used book sale or on the discount shelf, I will pick it up. (Right now, my problem is that I have five books stacked up on my bedside table, and one more I haven't written about yet -- another favorite from 20 years ago.)

*Rumor has it that Mosely has plans for a science fiction series to begin this year.

Have you read When the Thrill is Gone? Write. Tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it. Or write about anything you've read. I can always use new ideas. And so can you.

• The author's web site
• John M. Formy-Duval's review at About.com
• Tom Callahan's review in BookReporter
• Dick Lochte's review in the Los Angeles Times

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Another in a long series

A May or two ago, I picked up a book to read for fun. I'd picked it up a couple weeks earlier and started it one night on my way to sleep. It started to suck me in right off the bat, and I knew I didn't have time to finish it So I put it back on the pile until I was up at the cabin called Sidetrack. I finally read it, though it almost kept from a decent night's sleep again.

I found this book on a temporary table at the grocery store. I guess there weren't enough out dated products to fill up the aisle, so they filled a table with books. It was like finding a Chinua Achebe novel at Target or a Laurie R. King novel at Wal-Mart (both of which I've done).

The book was Bad Boy Brawly Brown (an Easy Rawlins novel) by Walter Mosley. For a time context, let it be noted that I first discovered Mosley's novels about the same time newly-elected Bill Clinton was photographed carrying an early Mosley novel down the steps from Air Force One. Some have been great. One has been terrific. Others have been so-so. Rather like my teaching days.

Mosley always tells a story directly and succinctly. And it's that kind of beginning that sucks me into them quickly. This one concerns the ongoing story of Easy Rawlins and his attempts to be a good man in an imperfect world. Haunted by the apparent death of a boon companion who was also a dangerous companion, Rawlins is asked by John, a long-time friend to “rescue” the son of John's girlfriend.

The complications involve race relations in LA in the late 1950s, idealistic and radical racial politics, and human frailties. And there's Rawlins' children, his job, and his girlfriend.

It's a great quiet tale even though there are dangerous adventures. It's quiet because Easy Rawlins has become thoughtful, analytical, and methodical as he's gotten older. And, while at one moment in the story he celebrates “being able to lie again,” he gets a lot more mileage out of telling the truth.

Mosley also uses the story to teach. Like this lesson:

“He looked me up and down, decided by some unknown calculations that I wasn't a threat, and said, 'Colonel Lakeland. Come with me.'

“He turned and walked back through the buff doorway.

“As I followed, I experienced a familiar feeling of elation. It's a reaction that black people often have when going into the slave master's quarters. In there, we imagine, is the place where freedom resides. And if we get the chance, maybe we could pick up a little of that most precious commodity when the man is otherwise occupied.

“I smiled at my silly delight.”

The book is well worth the time I spent with it, especially since I could put it down and look at the lake and the eagles flying over it. I am glad I had the strength to put it down and get a good night's sleep. How else could I have gotten all the windows washed in this cabin by the lake?

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