The Long Fall

Leonid McGill is a private detective in New York, and it’s a PI from Albany, Ambrose Thurman, who hires him to find four guys. All he had to go on was their street names from more than 20 years earlier: B-Brain, Big Jim, Toolie, and Jumper. McGill had a long history of doing really dirty work, often for the Mafia, but in the last few years, he had grown a conscience. He was only willing to track these men after being assured by Thurman that no harm would come to any of them. McGill was able to track the men down, but when they started to be murdered, he was angered. Then, Thurman was killed, clearly as an attempt by his client to cover tracks. This was a good and fast read, excellent entertainment.

Walter Mosley is a most prolific author who you might know from the movie Devil in a Blue Dress starring Denzel Washington. That movie was from the first of his 13 mystery novels about Easy Rawlings, a black PI in LA. In this book, The Long Fall, Mosley included numerous interesting characters including McGill’s son, Twill of whom his father described, “For all his superior qualities, was a natural-born criminal.” McGill’s estranged wife Katrina moved back in with him when her wealthy lover was indicted for securities fraud. There is no love in this relationship and McGill Katrina will be out of there as soon as she can land another wealthy guy. Of course, McGill was really in love with his landlord, Aura Antoinette Ullman. This is the first in his five-novel series about McGill, and I plan to quickly move onto the second book, Known to Evil.