Walter Mosley | The Remainder Table

From the library book sale, Spring 2012:

This is the first book of a new series set in present-day New York City. It’s narrated by the main character, private investigator Leonid Trotter (LT) McGill:

“Leonid? What kind of name is that for a black man?”

“My father was a Communist. He tried to cut me from the same red cloth. He believed in living with everybody but his family. McGill is my slave name. That’s why I got to do business with fools like you.”

The Long Fall (13)

Because it’s a new series, there’s a lot of establishing of background and setting and character going on. I liked Leonid as a narrator. He’s intriguingly flawed (he has a criminal past, which he’s trying to leave behind) and has an interesting dynamic going on with the secondary characters, especially his dysfunctional family and Aura, the woman with whom he has complicated relationship. However, there were a lot of minor characters that were less developed who were hard to keep track of. So many names! As characters reappear in subsequent books and become more familiar, this should be less of an issue, but it was a problem here.

The Long Fall has a very classic, hardboiled detective feel even though it’s contemporary and Leonid doesn’t shy away from current technology. His personal assistant, Zephyra, calls herself a ‘telephonic and computer personal assistant’ — she works from home making reservations, answering calls & the like for 10-12 clients who she charges $1500/month. Erm, that’s a pretty good job if it’s real. Is it? For 180-216k a year I’ll make your reservations for you. Damn. Life. I’m doing it wrong.

Anyway, the story is that Leonid has been hired to find four men. His client, ostensibly another detective, only knows their teenage street names. He finds the first three easily—one dead, one in prison, one awaiting trial (this is on page 4; it’s not a spoiler)—but has more difficulty with the fourth. The story starts just when he thinks he’s found him and as he’s starting to have suspicions about the motivations and legitimacy of the person who hired him.

I like Mosley’s writing style. You can see the potential for the series in this book. This was a good story, but I think subsequent ones, as Leonid and the other characters develop, will be even better.

Cinnamon Kiss by Walter Mosley

Previously on The Remainder Table: I Heart You, Walter Mosley.

And… that is why you blog, folks. Well, at least one of the reasons.

So anyway, since then I’ve wanting/meaning to read some Walter Mosley. Hoping his writing of fiction would live up to his writing about the writing of fiction. Because, as you know, sometimes it doesn’t. But this time… it did.

Cinnamon Kiss is the 10th Easy Rawlins mystery, so I jumped into the series in medias res. It was ok, though. Even though the book did not have a huge “as you know, Bob” info-dump on the first few pages (thank you), enough info was sprinkled throughout to sort out the supporting characters and pick up the gist of the existing relationships. I do imagine knowing the full background of the characters would add further dimensions to the story, however.

So anyway, I really enjoyed Cinnamon Kiss. Sometimes I almost forget how much I like mystery fic (so much mediocrity out there…). And then something like this reminds me. Oh, yeah… But the best part about it may be that fans of the series think CK isn’t Mosley’s best work. So yay! If the rest of the series is even better, awesome. I have something (or 10 more somethings) to look forward to.

In CK, Easy’s daughter is sick and he needs to raise some money quick to pay for her treatment. He’s so desperate he considers pulling off a heist with his friend Mouse, but reconsiders when he gets a call from another friend, Saul, about a job for a mysterious detective in San Francisco.

The mystery was solid, although the final resolution was a little less than satisfying. And oh, sure, Easy’s a little too popular with the ladies. But it’s detective fic, so it’s already a bit o’ a fantasy to begin with, so I think that’s ok. The story’s setting and atmosphere were vivid and the characters intriguing, but I think Mosley’s real strength is dialogue. The dialect switches (depending on whom a character was speaking to) seemed absolutely effortless. I wonder if he teaches. He could totally give a lesson on dialogue how-to.

Also I do love that Easy is short for Ezekiel. Of course I do.

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