A Leonid McGill Mystery (Leonid McGill series Book 4)

This was my first and last mystery by Mosley. The protagonist requires a great deal of willing suspension of disbelief. He is a 5'6" Jack Reacher. The plot is full of murky villians backed by nefarious big business conerns. Mosely does keep a nice pace to the narrative and the plot line is not transparent. You will be kept guessing.

This is my third Walter Mosley novels and I found it entertaining. My only issue was with the amount of characters to remember who done what, who knew who and who done did it. I see some reviews that said the protagonist Leonid McGill is unbelievable and wish to remind readers that fiction can create just that, not true images of the strength and skills of a human thus super dudes. The title "All I Did Was Shoot My Man" was perfect for the crime and the mystery surrounding the charges made to Zella. She found her fiancee in bed with her best friend and did what she thought was the cure for that betrayal - shot him, missed her. More than for shooting the dirty rat boyfriend she went to prison for an involvement of a big heist, $58 million and then after several years released. This is where McGill, a street smart, too often dirty himself, detective comes in. He is hired by his attorney to clear Zella's name and in that, find out who else could be involved in this heist. The characters, as in all of Mosley's novels (that I've read thus far), are colorfully presented in different skin tones, hues and shades - some shady as can be, i.e. street killers, assassins, thieves, cons and some pitifully wronged by society and suffering, as long suffering McGill's wife. I like the dialogue, understanding and "been there" street language. I like the stories underlying the main story. I just like reading Mosley. If it seems to unreal to be real, remember, it is fiction. It is entertainment. It's cool, man. Read it for the solving of the crime, but also for unusual characters.

I like science fiction and romance and a good crime story that is more a thoughtful mystery than a forensic file. I am 60, black, and finally, I am reading Walter Mosley. However, with all the things Mr. Mosley and I have in common I do not like Leonid (LT) McGill or his world. That may be because he does not seem to like it either. He tolerates it. Sometimes his attempts at atonement work, sometimes they don’t. All the characters are so shadowy and sketchy that, even after 4 books, I do not understand what motivates them. What motivates Twill? His favorite son not of his blood. (Do we have to be reminded of that once a chapter?) What motivates his wife, Katrina? Is it as simple as the biological havoc of menopause? And what is reconnecting with LT’s missing and presumed dead father about? It that part of LT’s penance, to make that relationship right? This is a very dysfunctional family. So what if he can walk up ten flights of stairs without collapsing, kill an intruder with his bare hands, and speak French and German. I am still not convinced I am on his side. Maybe that is what Mosley is trying to say with all his descriptive ethnic and skin tone references. Maybe there is no black and white. Maybe all of us are a combination of things that were not originally thought to go together.

I was tired when I finished “All I Did Was Shoot My Man”. I had forgotten who the “I” was and who the “Man” was, too. This book is not about that crime. You can skim through those sections. Don’t bother remembering those names. It is a roundabout that makes no sense anyway if the mystery were to stand alone. This book is all about LT and Katrina. It opens with her, and it ends with her. The questions I want answered in the next book have to do with him and his family which is either expanding or shrinking depending on the outcome of the cliffhanger ending. I want Mosley to make me care about LT. So far that has not happened.

The main sleuths in Walter Mosley novels are two very different men. In my heart, I still love and adore Easy Rawlins. He remains my first love. In this novel, I met Leonid Trotter McGill. Leonid is brutal and street smart. Leonid has a short fuse. He doesn't have time to mess around. You either want him to work for you or you don't. It's that easy. However, McGill is not just a man ready to punch you out. He's also a family man. Weaved beneath each case in this novel, is the importance of family to McGill.

There is Zella, a woman who has just gotten out of prison. She was charged with the shooting of her boyfriend, Harry Tangelo. She found her man in bed with another woman. She has no bitterness when she walks out of the prison. Of prime importance to her is her daughter. Little Zella has been adopted. Zella, the mother, wants to see the parents of her child and talk about getting her back. At the least, she wants to meet the family and to see her child. She hires Leonid to climb over all the adoption red tape.

Then, there is the case with the very rich Mr. Mycroft. His son, he feels, needs to be saved from the bad boys on the street. The son supposedly has been coerced into running with a bad crowd. Of course, Kent Mycroft is Mr. Sweetness. Leonid is hired to find out what's going on. Then, tragedy strikes the McGill home. One bloody night will change Katrina's whole life. Two assassins break in the home. It's the middle of the night. McGill is naked in bed with his wife. He has no idea that in a few hours blood will color the floor of his home. McGill will shoot one man and break the windpipe of the other guy. Katrina can't forget about that night. Her life will never be the same. It is Katrina who will clean up the bloody mess. Only God knows where her mind must have turned as she wiped up the mess. Also, there are three gun shots in her daughter, Shelly, daughter. Unfortunately, this proves what happens in the streets often comes home to roost. Families are endangered and experience emotional pain. Worse, they have no idea what case their detective father and husband are working on.

On a lighter note, I enjoyed meeting Twill. Twill works with his father on the Mycroft case Twill is so cool. I really like him. He finds Kent Mycroft. He eases information out of him about what he's doing around town. Twill seems like a pro. I almost had the feeling that something might happen in another book to Leonid and Twill would become the new heroic sleuth. Again, there is family. To top it all off, McGill receives a call from his dad. A man he hasn't seen in forty-four years. I know Walter Mosley is making a statement about family. I seriously doubt that my mind has stretched as far as the author might have wanted me to go.

I have to write that the crimes, the money heist, the shooting of Zella's man didn't excite me. I felt Zella should have more to say in the novel. This is the first time I felt a bit disheartened by a Walter Mosley mystery. Maybe Easy Rawlins will always be the right man for the job.http://www.waltermosley.com/

Walter Mosley has proven over and over again during the past two decades that he is not only one of America's greatest mystery writers, but is one of America's greatest writers period --- an American literary treasure. And in ALL I DID WAS SHOOT MY MAN, the fourth entry in his Leonid McGill series, Mosley has given us one of his best works ever.

While he probably will always be remembered as the creator of the Easy Rawlins mysteries, which showed us the mean streets of Raymond Chandler's postwar Noir L.A. from the perspective of a black detective, Mosley is doing something equally fascinating in the series featuring New York private eye Leonid McGill.

For years, mystery fans lamented that the hardboiled detective had been copied so frequently after Dashiell Hammett and Chandler that he had become a cliché: the loner in a corrupt world who is himself good and fights for what is right and just with the help of the bottle of Rye in his desk drawer. Many said that the American PI was a genre that was finished, especially when written in the first-person narrative.

Mosley has proven them quite wrong with Leonid McGill. In Leonid, he gets us rooting for someone who has been a bad guy all his life. Leonid tells us at the start: "I worked for organized crime and other professional bad men finding patsies for those that felt law enforcement closing in...I'd plant false evidence, alter phone records and forge documents to prove that some other poor slob at least might have been the perpetrator." The cops, he tells us later, "suspected me of everything from contract murder to armed robbery, from kidnapping to white slavery." They were never able to take him down for anything. But we know, as the series starts, that Leonid is trying to go straight or, as he says, "at least as straight as a man can get after a lifetime of being bent."

Enter Zella Grisham, who came home from work one day several years ago and found her boyfriend in bed with her best friend. Hence the title. But since she was already involved in a shooting, somebody paid Leonid to frame her for the robbery of $58 million from an insurance company. Leonid did the job. The stolen money was never recovered, except for the $50,000 he was given to plant on Zella. Trying to make amends but not admitting his role in her downfall to her, Leonid gets Zella released from prison. This sets off a series of events where the past is never past and bodies start piling up; the cops think Leonid knows more than he says, which he does, but they also suspect he was in on the robbery. Leonid must get to the bottom of it before he becomes the next victim.

In Leonid McGill, Mosley has created a character Dostoyevsky would have loved. Leonid is a guy struggling to do the right thing, to find redemption in a world where the concept may no longer even exist. And still things go wrong for him. He is trapped by his choices in life in a true Noir underworld where he knows that despite what he does to make things right, someday he will have to pay for his sins. When somebody calls his name on the street one night, he thinks, "I was unarmed and on an empty street. That could have been the moment of my death. Could have been. Probably would be one day." It does not get more hardboiled than that.

Leonid goes through this book and series always with a dark cloud over his head. And Mosley has taken the cliché of the lone wolf knight errant detective and turned it on his head. Leonid is a family man of sorts, haunted not just by his underworld career. For years, he hated his Communist father who deserted him as a child and destroyed his mother in order to go fight in the revolutions of South America. Now that father, who he long thought dead, is very much alive and back in the city. Then there is his marriage of 24 years to a perpetually unfaithful woman who gave him three children, only one of whom is his blood. Leonid takes care of this dysfunctional family.

And there is trouble on Leonid's home front. One son is moving out to live with a former prostitute. His second son has already followed him into a life of crime, and Leonid is trying to protect him by taking him under his wing as a PI in training. Meanwhile, his young daughter is involved in an unsuitable relationship with an older man. And his wife wants reconciliation while he is in love with another woman. Leonid must untangle or try to untangle all these knots.

Mosley has written a mystery novel that transcends the genre --- a private-eye story for the new, uncertain and constantly dangerous century. ALL I DID WAS SHOOT MY MAN is one of the best books of 2012, and you can't help but root for Leonid McGill. We have much to look forward to with this series. Kudos to Walter Mosley.

Reviewed by Tom Callahan

Walter Mosley has created some memorable characters over the years, particularly Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill, and I have enjoyed following them over the years. For me, a Walter Mosley novel is as much about the personal evolution of his regular characters as it is about the crime stories that anchor them. That's an especially lucky thing for me in the instance of Mosley's new one, All I Did Was Shoot My Man, because while the reader learns a lot more about McGill and his family, plot development suffers a bit from what I see as over-ambition for it.

That is not to say that the plot, on its face, is not an intriguing one. Leonid McGill is a complicated man, and there are some things in his past of which he is not especially proud. One of those things is his direct involvement in framing a young woman for a crime that sent her to prison and forced her to give her baby up for adoption. Now, that woman, Zella Grisham, is being released from Albion prison, and Leonid wants to help her to a good start on the rest of her life. He is at the Port Authority Bus Station to meet her when the prison bus arrives, hoping to convince Zella that he is there to look out for her best interests.

Unfortunately for Zella and Leonid, others are also interested in her release - and the bulk of $58 million dollars that disappeared in the crime that sent her to prison. Leonid, himself wondering who walked away with all that money, begins to push a little too hard on some of the parties he suspects, and soon has a trail of international hit men chasing him and Zella - certainly, an interesting plot upon to write a mystery around.

I was distracted from the main plot, however, by two choices that Mosley made. First, he threw so many strangely named characters into the pot (many of whom are in and out too quickly to make much of an impression on the reader) that I became confused just when everything should have started coming together in my mind. Second, too much of the "action" comes to the reader second-hand by having one character recap in conversation with another things that happened offstage - always a boring device.

Those will be minor flaws to many readers, I suspect, but to me they were disappointing. Still, this is a key addition to the Leonid McGill mystery series and fans of the series will not want to miss it.

EXTREME WARNING: Unless your computer has updated Norton Anti-virus protection or comparable protection against covert & malicious software (which infects your computer & then downloads all your files at night by spies) DO NOT ACCESS ANY OF MY REVIEWS!!! [This is no hype or joke.]

Sometimes when you're really, really good at something, the more self-confident (or even cocky) you can become... and thus, the more risks you take.

As an author, Walter Mosley has shown himself to be a master of detective novels... beginning with his Easy Rawlins series. But when you're as good as Mosley is, you begin to ache to show what you're capable of for now... for today... with a 21st century twist, that's co-extant with modern computers and today's technology. This is exactly what he has done in his Leonid McGill detective series which all have a New York setting and flavor, and again demonstrates that Mosley remains the absolute master of detective fiction... even for today.

BUT... much the same as a juggler who keeps adding balls... the more you do so, the more difficult it is to maintain them all... despite having even awesome skills. This is what Mosley's latest novel, ALL I DID WAS SHOOT MY MAN, feels like... that maybe one plot (or two) too many got added and juggled... and the result is an over-all story that feels less-intense, less-focused, and less sure of itself. Thus, the multiple story-lines (ever germane to this series) seem less-controlled and much more scattered... as now, even old ghosts rise from the dead.

Although the novel is a good one, it's maybe NOT QUITE as good or as interesting as the others in his Leonid McGill series. Mosley needs to juggle a few less minor characters and sub-stories, and concentrate more on the basic thematic connections... while once-again providing us with the extraordinary insights that he usually dazzles his readers with.

Leonid Trotter ("LT") McGill is a 55-year-old African-American man, a former boxer, con man, fixer and over-all reprobate turned [relatively honest] PI is one of the more unusual characters in mystery fiction. Married, he has little if anything to do with his wife. As far as his three children are concerned, he acknowledges that two are not his, but he loves and nurtures all. His collection of friends and associates are as unconventional as he is. And so are the books in the series, all somewhat bizarre but very enjoyable.

The plots of the books, while intricate and complicated, tend to be odd. And the present installment is no different. In the past, LT framed a young woman who shot her boyfriend three times, when she came home to find him in bed with her best friend. Since she was destined to go to jail anyway, he planted evidence in her locker of complicity in a $548 million heist from an insurance company. Some years later, LT finds the "false" information that led to her conviction following which his lawyer gets her released from prison. As a result, a number of events take place, including an attempt on LT's life, along with the murders of several others. Of course, it's up to him to solve the case.

Written in a style that sometimes defies belief, the complexity and insight of the novel and, especially, the LT character, are overwhelming. With each book, development of LT as a person deepens, and the reader gains substantial knowledge of the man.

Highly recommended.

Another entry in Mosley's Leonid McGill series is a winner.

Leonid McGill was raised by a hard left father, who put his love for communist ideology and the revolution over his family. His father ultimately abandoned the family. Leonid rebelled and turned to the criminal element as his new "family." His specialty was setting up innocent people to create "reasonable doubt" for the real criminals. Now, with three almost adult children and an alcoholic wife, he has gone straight, but struggles as he realizes that he has repeated his father's sins by putting his own career above family. Now, one of his old cases is back.

Seven years ago, Zella shot her husband when she found him in bed with her best friend. She was arrested, but was likely to get off. However, Leonid took advantage, and planted money from a multi-million dollar robbery in her storage locker. She was convicted, as the real robbers went free. Now, Leonid is trying to undo the injustice he did, and arranges for her release by proving her innocence. The plot thickens, however, as the real robbers seek to silence everyone connected with the set-up, to protect their ill got millions. When they go after Leonid's family, the stakes skyrocket.

Along the way to seeing that justice (or at least what passes for justice in Mosley's world) Mosley does his usual fantastic job of giving us just enough back story on a range of characters to make them come alive, and make us care about their inner conflicts. Leonid's evolution as a character continues, as does especially that of his oldest son, and his receptionist (a new series yet to come?).

All in all, a masterful job by an author with a great track record.

Of all the Leonid McGill books the protagonist is most likable during this novel; which was a nice rebound from "When the Thrill is Gone." McGill is anchored in reality, constantly humbled by his mistakes, fighting a tug-of-war with his conscience, his past, his father's disappearance. His self-talk is the narrative of the book; he's both negative and positive in the span of a few pages. But I was encouraged by his ethos: "One day; one choice." This spoke to the reader: white, black, young or old; whether you read the other books in the series or not. I shared empathy or pathos with Leonid McGill, after walking his road in ways (although I am not like him demographically at all?!). The story kept up a good pace. I hurried through this book. I want to thank the author for what he had McGill say at the start of Chapter 56. Since it concerns Racism, I'll leave to the author to say and not me to paraphrase--I want to repeat that it struck me as something that needs to be said more often. (page 316, next to the last chapter in the book).

Which circle of hell are you in? In reading Mosley new book one's life can't be as bad as his protagonist Leonid Mcgill. And you can't help relishing his troubles when there portrayed so expertly by Mosley. Yes Mcgill is a mess.
All his past sins,like in the House of The Seven Gables, will not let him rest until he can find a solution. Luckily for Mcgill he is one tough hombre, no matter what is thrown at him he is quick and deadly. His past is a loaded gun and he knows how to shoot.
Part of the fun of Mosley's style is his Joycean interior dialogue. His narrative is a whirlwind of interior consciousness. He moves through New York like Joyce moved through Dublin except with much more cache. Mcgills associates run the panorama from killers, Police captains to geek protege's. His family is also a delight; each one unique, charming and a challenge for Mcgill; Mcgill realizes that his children not only have been mightily influenced by him but will also inhabit the same twenty first difficulties that he has encountered.
No doubt this is one feverish book. Not only is Mcgill's temperature rising but also the readers.

Another solid entry in the Leonid McGill saga, though still shy of the greatness that was Known to Evil. Leonid's latest attempt to right the wrongs of his past places him in the cross hairs of a particularly dangerous foe. Unfortunately, the enemy remains too far away from the action to really flesh out the character, and so the denouement of the novel lacks the punch it ought to have, especially since there are very few secondary storylines in this latest Walter Mosley thriller to pick up the slack.

Recommended, but this shouldn't be the first book in the series you pick up.

Leonid McGill is burning up with fever. But that just rewires his mental faculties, making him strangely smarter. He's got a far more dangerous infection raging in his blood: remorse.

In the not-so-distant past, the fifty-five-year-old black ex-boxer and private investigator did a lot of dirty work for lawless individuals. Now he's making up for his sins. But as he attempts to right wrongs and save lives, people on his path start getting executed.

The trouble seems to be connected with a major multinational heist carried out some years back. Leonid has no special desire to solve this crime, but if he doesn't, more lives could be lost - including his own.

I won't go into plot details. But the investigation gives Leonid plenty of opportunity to browbeat bureaucrats, foil attackers, backtalk the cops, reflect upon literature and philosophy, and demonstrate his lethal fighting skills. Friends from Leonid's dubious past are happy to help him: Bug the lovesick hacker, Hush the retired hit man and Sweet Lemon the ex-con turned poet.

Competing with the perilous investigation is Leonid's tumultuous personal life. He has numerous worries concerning his unfaithful wife, his exotic ex-girlfriend, the wayward behavior of his grown-up children, and the whereabouts of his long-lost anarchist father.

As always with Walter Mosley's books, the writing is totally seductive, sometimes verging on poetry, often deadpan funny. The dialog is pure artistry. All the characters are engaging, but Leonid McGill is particularly appealing with his curious mix of self-loathing and self-confidence.

I love the Leonid McGill mysteries and suggest reading them all, in order. But this latest book is so self-contained, it can also stand alone. It might be my favorite so far.

Walter Mosley is one of my all time favorite authors, I haven't come across a book of his that I didn't like, and this one is no exception. As usual, I won't waste your time with the storyline, because by the time I've read books and come to give my review..all of that is posted (sometimes with spoilers, so be careful!)

I love the time periods that Mosley writes in, and it can be annoying sometimes with the language, but I don't mind it, with all of his books, I hear each character
speaking exactly as he has written it. My mom loves him, but she can't stand as she puts it "old ebonics" If you have read the Easy Rawlins series..you should be used to it. I recommend you read it for yourself.

Last year I read and reviewed my first (but Mosley's third) installment in the Leonid McGill series, When the Thrill is Gone. It was enough to make me love this character - a thinking man's P.I. with a philosophical bent:

The path of my life appeared before me-hard and clear. I could,
in the dream, turn around and take everything back. I could pass
through time and decide not to help Zella or lie to Shelly. I could
travel all the way back to the womb and be another person or no
one at all. But I was too comfortable on that quartz plinth under
the summer's sun. Laying there my life seemed to have enough
meaning to engender nostalgia - the greatest enemy of human logic.

In All I Did Was Shoot My Man, Leonid is back, trying to atone for some of his past wrongs. When a woman named Zella gets out of prison for the double crime of shooting her boyfriend for cheating on her with her best friend as well as being part of a multi-million dollar heist from the Rutgers Assurance Corp., he meets her at the station with start-up money, a place to stay, and a job.

When people Mosley knows are actually associated with the heist start to turn up dead, Leonid convinces Zella to go to one of his safe houses while he tries to figure out who is responsible. The consummate multi-tasker, he is following up leads on his own father (who deserted the family when Leonid was young), trying to keep his younger son out of trouble by hiring him, looking for the baby that Zella was pregnant with when she went to prison, and working to keep from being killed himself.

Mr. Mosley has come up with another winner - part mystery, part thriller, part family drama - completely entertaining.

QUOTES

I mean Katrina and I hadn't been intimate or jealous of each other's lives in years. We had three children but two of those had nothing to do with my DNA. Katrina said they were mine and I went along with the sham because they were in my house and Katrina maintained that house. She also made the best food I ever ate in my life.

"Mr. Plimpton, I'm going to sit on this couch and wait until I either speak to Miss Lowry or somebody she reports to. You can go back into your rat's maze and tell the king rat that I said so."

"Somebody's trying to kill me?" I asked.
"I believe that your name might be on a list somewhere."
"What kind of sense does that make?"
"You think you're so innocent that no one could ever mean you harm?"
"No. What I wonder is why would you care?"
"I'm a cop, LT. It's my job to protect the welfare of even garbage like you."
I disconnected the call. No reason to argue or protest. I was interested at the obvious anger that Kit was feeling. He rarely showed his feelings. I didn't much either. That's why we might have been friends in another life.

Kit watched me for a few moments before saying, "That was some impressive killing you did. N**ed too."
"I hope I didn't embarrass Officer Palmer."
"She said that after all she heard about you she thought your Johnson would be bigger.'
"Tell her that the air conditioner was on."

Writing: 4 out of 5 stars
Plot: 4 out of 5 stars
Characters: 4 out of 5 stars
Reading Immersion: 4 out 5 stars

BOOK RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

walter mosley might well have been writing about a russian mob family, given the names of the black and white american mcgill family and the company leonid mcgill keeps. his brother, nikita, is in prison. his father, tolstoy, who left his wife and children forty years ago to join the `Revolution' is, leonid hears, back in the city, and leonid wants to find him. leonid's wife, katrina, is an adulterer and an alcoholic. one of their sons, dimitri, is about to move in with tatyana baranovich from belarus, a woman who makes leonid feels so uneasy that he brings her to the attention of hush, his hitman friend. in leonid's world where most of the men he knows have killed someone, hush manages to stand out. nor is leonid himself a man to be messed with, built like a fire plug, he's trained as a boxer, and has worked for gangsters. now in his late fifties, he says he's moving away from his past.

unfortunately, a job he did years ago as a favor that landed a woman in prison has come back to haunt him, zella grisham is released early from prison. involved was a fifty eight million dollar heist, the money never found, and powerful people believe, when leonid is paid to meet zella grisham at port authority bus terminal when she returns to the city, that he is interfering in unfinished business. his investigation to make sense of what happened, leads him to rooms with floor to ceiling glass walls and windows in high rises of the wealthy, and to fortified rooms without windows three floors underground, inhabited by those who prefer to stay off the grid. meanwhile, as he is following leads, he has employed his son, twill, a master thief, he hopes to reform, to work for him at his detective agency. twill is brought into a case when a wealthy man asks leonid for help when the client's son is suspected of running around with the wrong people.

a fast paced story with sufficient action and the necessary plot entanglements which run smoother than some of the confusions in previous mosley novels. the mcgills, father and son, find solutions to the separate mysteries.

as for the family drama of the mcgill family, that could fill the bill of several seasons of a tv series. watching the family draw closer at the story's end is far from a comfortable resolution. given the skill sets of family and friends, this seems like a gathering of forces for someone's no good in the future.

Leonid Gill is hired to meet Zella Grisham at the bus station after she has been released from prison for a crime she did not commit. Gill knows this because he framed her. Although, now he is a private investigator, then he was a hired to fix other people's problems (mostly illegal).

Gill's personal life is as complicated as he is professional life. He has a depressed wife, a girlfriend who doesn't want him and three children (one of which is actually his).

There is so much going on in this multifaceted story, and although, fast-paced, is not confusing. Mosley fills this mystery with family drama that makes for an outstanding read.

Leonid McGill is one of those unique but unforgettable characters in fiction. He is a short, pugnacious men with an unusual childhood, a criminal past, trying to go straight, when he gets the case of Zella Grisham. Leonid is a sort of private eye, a fixer of complicated problems, an urban philosopher, now in big trouble with assorted killers, a big corporation, and surly cops.

I can't tell you much about the plot, except that it's complicated, involves a lot of players and a lot of money, surging currents of emotion, and a serious risk to life. Will Leonid work his way through it without getting killed? Will he get together with his true love? Will he find his father, missing for 40 years? You'll have to read the book to find out. Just remember--don't try to figure everything out. Read it like music, just enjoy it page by page.

Author Walter Mosley is a story-telling genius with a unique urban voice. He's a spellbinder. Even if you can't keep all the characters straight or remember where the money went, you'll still keep reading. His dialogue is gripping and believable; his characters fascinating. You wouldn't want to have lunch with most of them, but you care about them in the book, wonder if they'll find what they're looking for, and what makes them tick. Like all of Mosley's books, I recommend this one highly. Read it as soon as you can. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

Walter Mosley is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century in my opinion. I've read practically everything he's written, and I must say that every book (well, maybe with the exception of "FutureLand" ) is first rate. They will keep you turning the pages and when you're through, you'll run to pick up the next one. Warning! Once you read one of Walter's books, you'll be hooked... Leonid McGil is an interesting character. Like most of Walter's leading men, he's always chasing and being chased. This adds to the mystery and mystique. I DO miss Easy Rawlins, Walter's first leading man, and although Leonid is not Easy, he's no less and entertaining read. More "anti-hero" than hero. If you've never read a Walter Mosley book, please start with Easy Rawlins and "A Devil In a Blue Dress." Walter's mysteries appear regularly on the The New York Times bestsellers list. He's my favorite writer. If you like mysteries, he could be yours, too.

Unlike Easy Rawlins, Leonid McGill is a very flawed character. But it's how Mosley deals with the flaws that makes the detective interesting and compelling to read about.

Though McGill is a supposedly reformed criminal, he is still not above doing something a little underhanded in order to get what he wants. Though he tries to keep the demons at bay, they are ever present and often willing to lend santuary in time of need. This is especially true of his friend Hush, the assassin who though retired is willing to step back into the game at a moment's notice if McGill should ask him too.

Then there is the disfunctional family to whom McGill is totally loyal, even when his heart and mind is calling loudly in another direction.

All of this makes for a rich tapestry that is constantly enriched by Mosely's gift for complex storytelling, in addition to his poetic flare and philosophical insight.

I think "All I Did Was Shoot My Man" is well worth the effort and that Leonid McGill is tailor made for the grimy Urban setting that is New York City in 2012. With this book Mosley is at the very top of the urban detective genre.

As a fan of Mosley's earlier works--especially some of the Easy Rawlins books--I was excited to find All I Did Was Shoot My Man on the new book shelf of our library. Mosley's combination of social commentary, snappy writing, strong character development, and historical analysis of Black life in America is always welcome reading, particularly in the summertime. Sure, he sometimes takes plot device shortcuts to move the story along, with characters suddenly having specific knowledge that seems created on the spot rather than earned. But that is par for the genre, and he tends to be judicious in the use of this trick.

However, All I Did is so loaded with the protagonist having sudden flashes of past knowledge and surprise new characters with special information that it makes the whole effort lose any coherent rhythm. When you add to this a laundry list of characters who are mainly just named rather than developed, you get a choppy novel of almost magical realism that is lacking in the magical and far short on the realism. Everytime Mosley writes his protagist into a corner he simply makes up a new character from the past who suddenly provides that nugget of information or performs some feat of superhero derring-do to bail out his character. And of course the main character is endowed with almost superhuman powers of strength, cunning, knowledge and controlled anger.

Want a protagonist who can quote Marx, Lenin, Proust, William Carlos Williams, and Batman in one paragraph, all while being a street-trained formerly homeless person who was originally home-schooled by a radical Marxist? You got him here. Looking for that superhero who can kill professional assassins with a single squeeze of his mighty hand (while standing stock naked and just awoken from a sound sleep in his hallway)? Leonid is your man. How about a hardened killer with a soft heart looking to atone for a lifetime of mostly undescribed sins? Step right up. And don't forget the mysterious SuperCop with omniscient knowledge of the criminal world, working on his own without a station house or boss, revered by all cops on the force and feared by all criminals, who happens to pop up with perplexing hints just when needed and who helps the good-bad guy cover up his vigilante work. Mosely is simply trying too hard to make everyone in this book special and super.

I have a simple rule of thumb when reading such books. As soon as the supernerdy geek idiot savant living in a basement apartment surrounded by the equivalent of a supercomputer and able to hack into any database in the universe shows up, it is time to turn out the lights, the story is over. Bingo for All I Did, and pretty early on in the plot to boot.

Even the best crime fiction strains credulity at times. But so much of this novel calls for a suspension of disbelief that it becomes embarrassing for the reader.

So sang Dinah Washington. And much like Dinah Washington, Walter Mosley's "All I Did Was Shoot my Man" is filled with the blues, the type of blues that makes for a great story.

Leonid McGill, who made his first appearance in The Long Fall, isn't as much a private eye as he is a `fixer'. Named after Leonid Breshnev by his long-absent revolutionary Marxist father, McGill's career involves taking other people's problems and finding a way out. Leonid's problem, and one that he is painfully aware of, is that the people whose problems he fixes are generally pretty unsavory and the fixes often have had the sometimes intentional, sometimes unintentional effect of getting innocent people drawn into messes that are not of their own making. Generally, this would not make Leonid an appealing character to wrap a series of stories around. However, in the hands of Mosley, McGill is drawn as one of those irresistible characters that draw you in and, against your better judgment, make you want to root for him to succeed. Leonid's saving grace is his painful self-awareness. He knows how flawed he is. In fact he is tormented by his past. His self-awareness and his strength in trying to steer a new course make him all the more human and it was impossible not to pull for him as the story progressed.

As noted, there's a lot of blues in this story. Leonid's wife Katrina is going off the deep end for reasons set out in the story. His eldest son, who he knows is not really his, is moving in with his Russian girl-friend, a woman with a checkered past that would make the Mayflower Madam blush. And, at the center of the story is one Zella Grisham. Recently released from prison for shooting her boyfriend after finding him in a `delicate' situation with her girlfriend, she is also the victim of one of Leonid's fixes. Leonid's job is to find some way to assist Zella, and find some redemption in doing so. The story line is complicated but involves the theft of $58 million dollars from an insurance company's vault in lower Manhattan.

As the story plays out we see the threads of each separate story line blend together. I won't speak of the plot as it is impossible to do so without spoilers. Let's just say that the story line is well plotted, well-paced, and sufficiently entertaining that it kept me up late as I decided to read `just one more chapter' and then another and then another before calling it a night.

The highlight of the story for me, though, was not the plotting but the characterization. I think Mosley has always had a fine eye for character development. His major characters such as Easy Rawlins, Fearless Jones, Socrates Fortlow and, now, Leonid McGill all seem fully realized. They are not heroes on white horses to save the day but real flesh and blood characters with all their flaws and painful back stories. His minor characters are similarly drawn and remind me, in this instance, of the type of New York characters set out by Damon Runyon, but with a harder New York edge.

I very much liked "All I did Was Shoot My Man" and have no hesitation about recommending to anyone who likes a hard-boiled story with some pretty well thought out characters. L. Fleisig

The more Walter Mosley develops the character of protagonist Leonid McGill, the greater the desire of fans to want the series to grow. The fourth novel of the series is titled All I Did Was Shoot My Man, and the contrasting love and loss, joy and sorrow of McGill, the tragic hero and private detective, caught me from the beginning and held me to the end. The complex relationship between fathers and sons is a motif in this novel, and the plot will require close attention. First time readers of the McGill series can begin here, but those who have read the earlier novels will be best prepared for the richness of this latest installment.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

Normally, I do not review works of fiction. But this was a Walter Mosley novel, and so I was happy to read and review it. I had not previously read Mosley books in paper format, but had heard a few Mosley audio books read by a professional narrator. In particular, they were the Easy Rawlins mysteries read by the amazing Paul Winfield. Something about Winfield's delivery just takes audio listening to a whole new level.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed this read, I still might get the audio version just for the pleasure of it. Especially if Paul Winfield is the reader.

The Mosley works that I've enjoyed have a gritty, believable quality to them. The characters sound real to my "reading ear" (and, as noted, to my listening ear when read by Paul Winfield). See the note at the end of this review about a believability exception in this book.

A friend visiting me from out of town noticed this book and asked about it. I was happy to point out something unusual about Mosley. Many authors will keep writing about a given character way past the point of absurdity. Pictures of dry wells and dead horses being flogged come to mind when I read those books. They should think up a new character, but they don't.

By contrast, Mosley has produced, from his brilliant mind, several characters. I really like Easy Rawlins and now find that Leonid McGill is another character I like to read about.

In keeping with Mosley tradition, the characters are lifelike rather than cartoonish. Some authors try to paint the lead characters as nearly flawless heroes, then give you a weak villain to play off of. Yet, it's the villain who "makes" the hero. Mosley understand this. His villains, like his protagonists, are complex rather than cardboard.

This story is a potboiler with a surprise ending (that fact should not be surprising, considering how adroit Mosley is at this sort of thing). I won't go into the plot, as that would spoil the story for the reader. However, I will say the plot is no simple formula-driven, crank out another novel thing. It's complex with many seemingly unconnected trails that eventually meet, yet the reader doesn't have to strain to keep track of who did what where. It just flows. And it flows at a fast pace.

Adding a richness to this story is a theme I noticed. I live in Kansas City, which is noted for Jazz. And where you have Jazz, you have Blues artists. Some of the stuff performed locally can make you see God. The cover of this book is blue. The characters have the kinds of lives that make me think of the Blues while reading. These characters live the same kinds of life complications that Blues singers sing about. Just the details are different.

If you're the kind of reader who appreciates a well-told story with characters you care about, you will find this book hard to put down until you have finished it.

The believability exception

One exception to believability in this work is the question "Is the President black?" is posed as if the answer is "yes." It doesn't seem believable that characters this savvy could be dim enough to buy this lie. In America, "black man" has a particular meaning, and it's a cultural one rather than a genetic one. By no stretch of the imagination is this Ivy League millionaire immigrant (no family history of oppression and discrimination in this country) a "black man."

Given the massive damage Obama's "suck capital from the economy" (and send it to Goldman Sachs, etc.) activities have done to the job market, especially for blacks (look up the numbers, it's shocking), I can't imagine why any working person of any color would want to be associated with Obama (regardless of Obama's genetics, race, etc.--non factors, IMO).

The race-baiting lying done purely to deceive blacks into giving up their voting power to Barrack "I destroy jobs" Obama instead of freely voting in their own best interests should not be promoted by anybody, most especially this otherwise outstanding author.

Leonid McGill is a private investigator with a checkered past. As he embarks on the later quarter of his life righting past wrongs take control. First he fixes the case against Zella Grisham but her release from prison starts a domino sequence that threatens to destroy everyone connected to her. As Leonid works through the madness, his life continues to unravel - his wife breaks through her depression, an old flame returns offering her heart, Zella's baby is found, his family is nearly killed and he thinks he saw his father. The action and mystery rolls through every page with barrels blazing. The characters are complex and the storyline unpredictable perhaps too much at times. This was my first Leonid McGill mystery but it definitely won't be my last.

Aways enjoy Mosley's writing and the latest is no exception. The introduction of Twill to McGill's business was a great touch, but even so the book starts slowly, and winds up to a satisfying end. I would recommend it as a good read .

Walter Mosley's Leonid McGill is an interesting character, and I look forward to the books that feature the PI. Unfortunately, "All I Did Was Shoot My Man" is not one of the best of the series. It promises to be interesting as McGill tries to help a women recently released from prison, a woman whom he helped to frame for a robbery she did not commit. Trying to make amends for his part in Zella Grisham's imprisonment, McGill trying to figure out who was really behind the "heist", puts himself and Zella in danger.

The book is, however, a disjointed read, with so many characters involved in the heist, but not really present in the book, that it is hard to follow. It bounces around too much, and made me wish Mosley would just have skipped the investigative part and concentrated on McGill's personal life, which changes drastically when it comes to his family. There are changes, too, with the woman he loves, but the parts of the novel that deal with that aspect of McGill's life get short shrift.

As always, the characters are interesting and McGill juggles his relationships and responsibilities in a determined fashion. I hope the next book in the series holds together better.

This was my first experience of the Leonid McGill series. Liked it so much, I went back and read the first one which was also great. They're gritty and erudite, refreshingly original and at the same time true exemplars of the genre. I get the feeling of peering over a wall and looking into the future that's emerging from the old politics of socialism, capitalism, racism. Gotta check out the Tesla Building!

The plot just moves you along and the characters are vivid, interesting. I miss Easy Rawlins but Leonid is an excellent newcomer, gutsy, timely, and for a "reformed" crook he's got a lot of integrity.