Killers have sights set on detective

Walter Mosley’s fiction never stops evolving.

Mosley is known as one of the most versatile and prolific living American writers, and a leading voice in addressing the African-american experience. His earlier series of novels featuring the detective Easy Rawlins – in which racial dynamics in 1950s-era Los Angeles sparked violence and intrigue – made him famous. In Mosley’s latest series, detective Leonid Mcgill operates against the racially integrated backdrop of contemporary New York, and now it’s the socio-economic struggle between classes, rather than race, driving the action.

All I Did Was Shoot My Man is Mosley’s fourth Leonid Mcgill novel. Mcgill is an ex-boxer and reformed thug who, like the title character in the sitcom My Name Is Earl, is working hard to correct his past sins and balance his karma, mostly to provide his three grown children with a more stable and secure life.

In All I Did Was Shoot My Man, Mcgill is trying to help Zella Grisham, a woman whom he framed years earlier for an insurance heist after she shot her cheating boyfriend. When Mcgill has her released from prison, the actual thieves launch a killing spree to cover their tracks and both Mcgill and Grisham are at the top of the hit-list. Mcgill’s survival hinges on him finding the killers before they eliminate everyone associated with the heist.

Mcgill’s backstory – populated by an absent communist father, an unfaithful wife, antagonistic cops, ex-lovers, marginal gangsters and assorted assassins – has developed over multiple novels; it would be difficult for a reader to enter the series without starting at the beginning.

Mosley’s social landscape is sensual, violent and charged with passions and power struggles that drive deeply flawed and occasionally noble behaviours. For those unfamiliar with Mosley’s oeuvre, the Leonid Mcgill series is a good starting point. For longtime Mosley enthusiasts, All I Did Was Shoot My Man won’t disappoint. All I Did Was Shoot My Man By Walter Mosley Riverhead Books, 326 pages, $28.50