Black and blue
Having already established two acclaimed series of crime novels featuring African American detectives, Walter Mosley introduces a new main character and pursues a mystery writer’s hat trick with his latest novel.
Joe King Oliver used to be a well-regarded New York City cop, a stickler for the rules, known for his compassion and sense of fairness. Although married with a daughter, he also had trouble with marital fidelity: “It didn’t take but a smile and wink for me ... to walk away from my duties and promises, vows and common sense, for something, or just the promise of something, that was as transient as a stiff breeze, a good beer or a street that couldn’t maintain its population.” Those footloose days were over when King was recorded having sex with a grand theft auto suspect.
Abandoned by his colleagues and his spouse, King was quickly thrown into Rikers, left at the mercy of fellow prisoners and sadistic jailers and put into solitary confinement. He learned to fight back and protect himself, but those lessons about his own potential for brutality came at a terrible cost. Although the case was dropped and King released suddenly and without explanation, his experience behind bars left him permanently scarred, physically and psychologically.
Thirteen years later, as “Down the River Unto the Sea” opens, King has his own private investigation business, with many of the day-to-day duties handled by his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. One day, King receives a letter from Nathali Malcolm, the now-repentant woman who set him up more than a decade ago. Her message rekindles in him a desire to understand the method and the meaning of his downfall.
Also requiring King’s attention is another case with deep roots in the past. An activist black journalist, born Leonard Compton but now known as A Free Man, is accused of killing two corrupt cops. He’s facing the death penalty, but his attorney seems suddenly reluctant to put up much of a defense. As soon as King begins investigating the situation, he realizes that he’s stirred up trouble he might not be able to control on his own. His path toward the truth leads him to hired killers and crooked cops, drug addicts and prostitutes, and a whole host of men, women and children, mostly African American, whose lives have been shattered by the law and those who are supposed to uphold it.
Mosley will always be known as the creator of Easy Rawlins, the Los Angeles detective whose saga began in “Devil in a Blue Dress,” set in the post-World War II era. In 2007, Mosley attempted to kill off Easy in a car accident at the end of “Blonde Faith,” but Easy proved surprisingly resilient, emerging from his coma in “Little Green.” Since then, author and character have remained on congenial terms, with Easy in fine form in last year’s “Charcoal Joe.”
Mosley’s second long-running series, featuring Leonid McGill and set in present-day New York City, puts a contemporary spin on the detective story, spotlighting one of the most put-upon investigators in crime fiction. With a rambunctious family and a volatile mistress, ex-boxer McGill sometimes finds life at home more dangerous than what’s happening on the streets.
As a protagonist, Joe King Oliver is more understated than Easy or Leonid, but he commands attention, decent but wounded, trying to identify the better parts of himself but scared of what else he might find.
The plot of “Down the River Unto the Sea” unspools neatly, recounted in a sleek, streetwise and captivating voice. Some of the book’s elements feel overly familiar, however. Particularly so is the presence of Melquarth Frost, King’s criminal sidekick with psychopathic tendencies. Frost is conveniently willing to attend to the tasks that King won’t handle himself and serves much the same function as Easy’s dangerously unpredictable friend, Mouse. Frost’s scenes are enjoyable, but might be more so with a greater degree of unpredictability.
With more than 50 books to his credit in various genres, from science fiction to memoir to erotica, Mosley is so prolific that he has the luxury of experimentation. With “Down the River Unto the Sea,” he does shake things up a bit, taking the opportunity to craft a story set squarely in the time of Black Lives Matter. Despite the years away from the force, King is still a cop at heart, even as he acknowledges the misery the police can bring down on civilians. At one point he says, “The bane of police work is innocent bystanders. You try your best, but unseen events, ricochet bullets, and false arrest are a part of the job.”
“Down the River Unto the Sea” is a well-constructed crime novel, urgent in its plotting and carefully observed in the behaviors and the voices of its supporting cast. Mosley makes it all look simple, creating in Joe King Oliver another fascinatingly flawed detective brimming with potential.