Review by New York Times Review
The archetypal American private eye is a good man who atones for his bad deeds by performing selfless acts of courage on behalf of others. Walter Mosley started Leonid McGill on that existential journey in "The Long Fall" by providing his New York P.I. with a murky history as a mob fixer. WHEN THE THRILL IS GONE (Riverhead, $26.95) finds McGill three books into the series but unable to shake his underworld connections - as a personal favor he's undertaking a search for the lost friend of a powerful crime boss. But there are other pressing matters to be taken care of: a man who has been like a father to him lies dying in McGill's apartment, McGill's wife is sleeping with a man half her age and if McGill doesn't get a paying job he won't be able to pay the rent on his office. ("And those were just the devils I knew.") For a healthy retainer, McGill takes the case of a nervous wife who suspects her billionaire husband of having an affair and planning to murder her to avoid a messy divorce. McGill is nobody's fool ("Most people I meet I cannot trust, believe, or believe in."), but while he can tell this woman is lying through her teeth, he senses her desperation and responds to the "underlying reality" of her tall tale. With all the dissemblers in this twisted plot, Mosley's compassionate shamus finds plenty of opportunity to apply his insight. At 55, McGill fears time may run out before he can do what needs to be done to redeem his honor: purge himself of the "anger issues" that once gave him an edge in the boxing ring, forgive the father he has hated all his life and save his own sons from repeating his mistakes. In the meantime, he can make reparation for "a thousand crimes committed without remorse" by doing kindnesses for strangers. And that's where Mosley's genius for characterization comes in. Unlike the flamboyant criminals who swagger through Mosley's Easy Rawlins novels, the characters who catch your eye here are people who are normally invisible: old folks living on the edges of society and young black men with "no notion of their history and no hope for a future except what they were told by the TV." The qualities that make McGill fit to be their hero are the same ones that make him the quintessential New Yorker: he sees it all and knows it all and somehow feels responsible for it all. In her fearless first novel, SO MUCH PRETTY (Simon & Schuster, $25), Cara Hoffman demolishes our illusions about country life by addressing the problems of poverty, domestic abuse, teenage violence and environmental damage that are threatening to destroy the small communities of rural America. Gene and Claire Piper, newly married doctors who worked in a free clinic on Manhattan's Lower East Side, thought they'd escaped the curse of modern civilization when they moved to a depressed upstate town and turned to organic farming. But years later, when their daughter, Alice, is in high school, their neighbors still consider them outsiders. Precociously brilliant Alice is even more of an alien, though she doesn't realize it until the murder of a local girl makes her aware of the community's hateful attitudes toward women. For all the passion in this intense narrative, Hoffman writes with a restraint that makes poetry of pain. She also shows a mastery of her craft by developing the story over 17 years and narrating it from multiple perspectives. While each has a different take on the horrific events that no one saw coming, the people who live in this insular place remain willfully blind to their own contributions to the deeper causes that made this tragedy almost inevitable. Ian Rankin retired John Rebus, his moody, broody Edinburgh cop, just as Scotland was becoming unbearably interesting. But Inspector Malcolm Fox, who makes his first appearance in THE COMPLAINTS (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown, $24.99) as a special investigator into police corruption, seems equally well positioned to take the pulse of the city in 2009, a time of mass layoffs and spiking unemployment. To a cop, the question is what all this means for organized crime, which has lost its easy access to money-laundering sources now that real estate development has dried up and the building trades have collapsed. Even for Rankin, who lives to obfuscate, this is a dense and complicated plot, featuring desperate mobsters and the crooked cops who would like to help them out. But it's a good introduction to the sober Fox and his younger partner, Jamie Breck, a master player of a computer game Rankin has whimsically named Quidnunc. LEARNING TO SWIM (Crown, $24) is the perfect romantic suspense mystery for people who won't admit they read romantic suspense mysteries. Sara J. Henry opens her first novel like a pro, at the tense moment when a young woman taking a ferry across Lake Champlain jumps overboard to rescue a child who's been tossed from a boat going in the opposite direction. Troy Chance, a sportswriter who lives in Lake Placid, keeps the traumatized boy in her care until she can determine who tried to kill him, a puzzle Henry efficiently resolves in the final scenes. But the throbbing heart of the story is right out of "Jane Eyre," with Troy installed as the boy's guardian in the Tudor mansion of his powerfully attractive father while the police diligently search (everywhere but the attic) for his missing wife. The tension holds up surprisingly well, although it doesn't pay to examine the logic of the situation too closely. Walter Mosley's P.I. tries to make reparation for a thousand crimes committed without remorse.'
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 13, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
In the third Leonid McGill mystery, following Known to Evil (2010),the African American private eye (he owes his unusual first name to his crackpot Communist father ), returns for another adventure. Unlike Mosley's celebrated Easy Rawlins novels, set in L.A. from the 1940s through the 1960s, this series is set in contemporary New York and features McGill employing all variety of high-tech gadgetry. And, yet, despite the trimmings, this one begins in classic hard-boiled Chandlerian fashion: a beautiful woman, Chrystal Tyler, arrives in McGill's office claiming her billionaire husband may be planning to kill her. The claim might be unbelievable, but her cash is real enough, prompting McGill to take the case. Inevitably, he finds himself stuck in the middle of a plot that's several levels more complicated than he had anticipated. Through three novels, McGill has become a likable enough series hero in the old-school mold. Mosley's many fans will find plenty to keep them engaged here, though they may still find themselves wondering if Rawlins really did die at the end of Blonde Faith (2007). HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Mosley's past successes have built a committed readership, especially for his crime fiction, and his publisher will make every effort to hook Easy Rawlins fans on this new series.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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 elocution are of particular importance, where there is a surfeit of story elements to keep straight. The main plot involves a deceitful client and McGill's investigation of a powerful billionaire whose wives have died mysteriously. Not only is it tricky and filled with false leads, there are numerous subplots involving the detective's personal life. His son is running a con game. His stepson is under the spell of a beautiful sociopath. His friend is dying of cancer and a young boy he's helping is on the run from thugs. (And that's not the half of it.) Master storyteller Mosley smoothly gathers all the many threads into a tidy bow at book's end, but it's Willis's crisp delivery that keeps us on track until he does. A Riverhead hardcover. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
PI Leonid McGill, a tough guy striving to make up for his past transgressions, carries a lot of baggage. When he was young, his father abandoned him and ran off to war somewhere, but Leonid's head is still filled with his father's revolutionary maxims. Leonid's best friend is dying of cancer in his apartment; Leonid loves his three children, but only one is really his; and his wife's cheating again. Mosley's plot is labyrinthine in this third series outing (after Known to Evil and The Long Fall), to say the least. A beautiful young woman hires Leonid to investigate her billionaire husband: she's convinced he plans to kill her. But the woman isn't who she says she is. Everyone lies to Leonid or hides things from him, but he plows ahead anyway. Mosley maintains interest until the end, when the plot fizzles out in a disappointing denouement VERDICT The scenes with Leonid's family are the best in the book, especially those that depict the sleuth's love for his wayward sons. Despite its flaws, this is an enjoyable book that will deservedly have fans. A welcome addition to a popular series. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/10.]-David Keymer, Modesto, CA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A client who isn't a client sends private eye Leonid McGill (Known to Evil, 2010, etc.) on his latest whirligig tour of New York's dark side.Billionaire Cyril Tyler's first two wives, Allondra North and Pinky Todd, died suddenly and suspiciously. So it's only natural for their successor, painter Chrystal Chambers-Tyler, to fear what he might do if he learned she was paying a private detective to get information about his infidelities. When he wangles a meeting with the well-guarded Tyler, Leonid realizes that the situation's more complicated than that. Tyler pays Leonid $10,000 to deliver an awkwardly conciliatory message to Chrystal. But Leonid can't because his client has disappeared. In fact, she was never Chrystal in the first place but her sister, Shawna Chambers-Campbell. Clearly afraid that Tyler planned some violence against her sister, Shawna was only half-right, since she's the one who gets killed in front of her five children. Not enough complications for you? Leonid has also reluctantly agreed to find crooked organizer Harris Vartan's vanished associate William Williams, a man whose trail seems to lead from one interesting dead end to the next. And between his wife Katrina's continuing affairs, his own off-again romances, his stormy relationships with his children and the decline of his cancer-stricken friend Gordo Tallman as he lies in Leonid's apartment, the story of the detective's home life is just as hectic, and bound to end just as inconclusively.A book filled with sharp individual scenes and hard-headed aphorisms.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
