The Long Fall

Finished listening to the novel a couple of days ago.

This is the first in Walter Mosley's Leonid McGill private detective series. I am a bit relieved that he is still interested and motivated to write mysteries in the same vein as his Easy Rawlins series. By the end of the ER series I was a little worried that he was burned out on mysteries altogether. Thankfully not. The plotting, characterization, and mood are all fairly conventional, unlike his more experimental books in the past few years.

Mosley can be a little over-expository sometimes, a little too much sighing and philosophizing. This novel suffers from too many character introductions from the beginning to nearly the end; therefore too many back stories to interrupt the flow. But the prose is beautiful, which reminded me of his claim that practicing poetry is good for the novelist. Love the vulnerability and emotional intimacy of the characters.