Rating: 5/5
Review:
A very good crime novel
I really enjoyed Down The River Unto the Sea. I read and liked the early Easy Rawlins
novels, but ran into diminishing returns with them and haven't read any Walter
Mosely since. I was very pleased to find
that he seems to have begun a new, very good series.
Joe King Oliver is a disgraced NYPD detective who was framed
and kicked off the force a decade before the book opens. He is now working as a private detective and
is asked to take a case investigating the conviction of a man for shooting two
police officers for which he is sentenced to death. He also begins to look into the circumstances
of his own downfall on the force, and the two appear to be related somehow.
It's a very well told story.
Mosely writes very good prose and Joe's narrative voice is extremely
convincing, as is the milieu of New York's
underworld. He creates excellent,
believable characters, especially Joe himself, who is flawed but fundamentally
honest and decent – and gravely damaged by his experience in prison. That experience is evoked brilliantly; it's a
fairly brief but exceptionally powerful passage, and all the more affecting for
not being laboured. His relationship
with his teenage daughter is also exceptionally well done, I thought. I found the story very good (although he does
meet an awful lot of people so it's not easy to keep track of the characters)
and I was gripped throughout.
In summary, this is a gripping, readable crime novel with
some genuine weight, too. I can
recommend it warmly and I look forward to more Joe Oliver.
(My thanks to Weidenfeld and Nicolson for and ARC via
NetGalley.)
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