‘Down the River Unto the Sea,’ written by Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley is not afraid of controversy. Joe King Oliver, the protagonist of his new novel “Down the River Unto the Sea,” is a black excop framed for the rape of a white woman. The premise alone is enough fuel for hours of discussion. Add in a wise teenage daughter, a devilish antihero partner and a death-row inmate inspired by Mumia Abu-Jamal, and we have a wild ride that delivers hard-boiled satisfaction while toying with our preconceptions.
King is a private investigator, but unlike Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill, he spent the first part of his career on the other side of the blue line, as a detective for the NYPD. Thirteen years earlier, the amorous detective fell into a setup orchestrated by shadowy enemies who needed him out of their way. He spent three months in prison before charges were dropped and he was released in disgrace, his job and marriage wrecked by the bus he got thrown under. He lives and works in Brooklyn Heights, taking on clients while dreaming of his vindication and return to the force.
When his alleged rape victim, an ex-prostitute turned born-again Minnesota housewife, sends him a letter implicating the NYPD in the frame job, King decides to find out what happened and why. The next day he lands the big case of a black militant journalist facing the death penalty for the murder of two police officers. The two investigations echo and swirl in classic noir fashion.
King runs around New York interviewing prisoners and radicals, assassins and addicts. He pursues corrupt cops, who pursue him in turn. There’s violence, adrenaline and enough unbeatable injustice to drive any principled PI deep into the bottle. And yet the uglier the story gets, the more he comes alive. After years of mourning his upright career, he seems to revel in this world turned upside down. He finds a sort of redemption by roguery. “My life was in shambles, but sometimes you had to break things down to see what was wrong,” he says. Despite its serious subject matter, “Down the River Unto the Sea” is an optimistic noir. A fitting work for a world riddled with dark contradictions. Walter Mosley at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, interviewed by Steph Cha, 2 p.m. April 21 in Bovard Auditorium.