Acclaimed American author is Writing on the Wall guest as part of One Magnificent City
American author Walter Mosley is making a rate UK appearance when he comes to Liverpool next week as part of the Writing on the Wall festival.

The 63-year-old is making a special trip from his home in New York to take part in ‘An Evening With’ event at Liverpool Town Hall as part of the American Dreams programme to celebrate Cunard’s 175th anniversary through the One Magnificent City programme. Read the rest of this entry »

By Adam Woog, Special to The Seattle Times

This month’s selection of crime fiction features two memorable private eyes and a square-jawed veteran of World War I.

Walter Mosley is renowned for his Easy Rawlins mysteries, but And Sometimes I Wonder About You (Doubleday, 288 pp., $26.95) falls into one of this prolific author’s other series — and it’s equally exhilarating.

Leonid McGill is a gumshoe with a past: The “post-black” P.I. grew up on New York City’s mean streets and is forever seeking to atone for past sins. He’s also got a remarkably messy personal life (many kids, mentally unstable wife, multiple affairs, politically radical father, etc.).

McGill, powerful but short, also has a strange mental tic: precisely describing the height of every man he meets. (Full disclosure: I am also height-challenged, but I like to think I’m not as preoccupied about it as McGill is.)

The book’s plot includes a gorgeous woman in danger, a Fagin-like mastermind with a network of child criminals, and a murdered homeless guy. Mosley doesn’t resolve these complex stories neatly, but then he’s never been as interested in plotting as he is in creating vivid characters and bracing, rat-a-tat prose — both of which are in abundance here.

(via Seattle Times)

BOB CUNNINGHAM 
Blade Staff Writer

If there’s anything that defines the modern world, it’s the ability to multitask.

The better you are at it, often the better your professional life is for it. Not your personal life, mind you. That’s a different story.

When the two are intertwined and depend on your broad shoulders, even though you’re only 5-foot-6? You better know your way around the ring, as well as Manhattan.

Meet Leonid McGill, Walter Mosley’s modern-day, New York-based private investigator. In And Sometimes I Wonder About You, McGill has even more on his plate than usual.

For starters, McGill’s wife, Katrina, is recovering in a sanatorium after a suicide attempt. His revolutionary and mysterious father, Tolstoy, whom Leonid hasn’t seen since he was a boy, is lurking somewhere in the shadows.

McGill’s son and partner, Twill, has taken on a much-too dangerous case and needs his father’s help. Plus, there’s Hiram Stent, a sad sack of man who tried to hire McGill to find his cousin for a vast sum of money. McGill turns him down and Stent turns up dead, which ultimately puts Leonid on the case.

Am I missing anything?

Oh yeah, while traveling for another case, McGill meets the beautiful con artist Marella. She makes his heart ache for his old ways as a fixer in the crime world. A few other friends — Gordo, Mardi, and Bug — have their issues. Even pal Hush, a former assassin, needs McGill’s life advice.

All in 272 pages.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was Mosley, not McGill, who’s the former boxer — the way he bobs and weaves from chapter to chapter, sidestepping deadly blows and delivering his own devastating combinations.

In last year’s standalone Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore, I compared Mosley to Thelonious Monk because of his unmatched rhythm. But with McGill — And Sometimes I Wonder About You is the fifth book in the series — boxing great Sugar Ray Robinson may be the better comparison because pound for pound there’s no one who can touch him. Certainly not McGill’s enemies and not the police trying to cash in debts past due. He outwits those who underestimate him and he overpowers his aggressors, and he knows how to get answers when he’s short on time and tired of the hustle: by putting his gun on the table.

No, he’s not above scare tactics to achieve his own personal justice. And yet he’s a big softy when it comes to the many women in his life, as well as his family.

Leonid McGill is someone you want in your corner.

Contact Bob Cunningham at bcunningham@theblade.com or 419-724-6506.

(via <a href="http://www.toledoblade Click Here.com/Books/2015/05/31/Leonid-McGill-juggles-perils-of-personal-professional-life.html” target=”_blank”>The Blade)