JANUARY 2023 - AudioFile
Narrator Dion Graham excels in this sequel to the Edgar Award winner DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA. Family ties draw investigator Joe “King” Oliver into finding out whether someone has framed a white nationalist for a crime he didn’t commit. In a second, unrelated case, King helps the husband of his ex-wife, Monica, whom police arrested for selling heating oil as diesel fuel. King agrees to investigate for the sake of his daughter, Aja. In a timely and thought-provoking story, Graham ratchets up the tension and pace as King peels layer upon layer of an onion that is rotten to the core. Portraying Oliya Ruez, King’s sidekick—with the emphasis on “kick”—Graham shines as wealthy and violent forces push King to the limit. R.O. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
01/02/2023
The tendency of PI Joe King Oliver, a former New York City cop, to take on two cases at once lands him in hot water in Edgar winner Mosley’s entertaining sequel to 2018’s Down the River unto the Sea. When his grandmother’s billionaire boyfriend asks him to look into the arrest and incarceration of an alt-right movement leader and race baiter, Joe doubts the validity of the charges, but is reluctant to become involved with a notorious bigot. Meanwhile, the husband of his ex-wife, Monica, has been arrested for selling heating oil as diesel fuel through connections to the Russian mob. Despite Monica’s unpleasant combativeness, Joe agrees to investigate for the sake of his high school valedictorian daughter, Aja. Mosley’s characteristic writing style is on full display, including his love of unusual similes (“The window gazed upon New Jersey but it was a misty day, making the Garden State look like a half-formed idea”). Joe continues to fascinate as a protagonist, and the secondary characters enrich the story whether they figure into the main action or not. While it may not quite measure up to his outstanding series opener, this is a worthy successor. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins Loomis. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
"Skitters across the spectrum between orthodox and radical like a polygraph needle wired to a nervy accomplice. . . Fans of his Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill series will not be disappointed, for we remain in the realm of deliciously gritty noir."—Daniel Nieh, New York Times Book Review
"Readers are treated along the way to the evocative prose and astute observations about human nature, race relations and family bonds that have distinguished Mosley's writing for some 30 years."—Paula Woods, Los Angeles Times
“Mosley’s characteristic writing style is on full display, including his love of unusual similes (“The window gazed upon New Jersey but it was a misty day, making the Garden State look like a half-formed idea”). Joe continues to fascinate as a protagonist, and the secondary characters enrich the storywhether they figure into the main action or not...a worthy successor.” —Publishers Weekly
“Coiled-spring-of-a-PI King Oliver—a cop until he was unjustly incarcerated on Rikers—is almost relieved when his latest case, involving the Musk-like figure Alfred X. Quiller, drops him into the clutches of a white-supremacist gang. His reasoning: As a Black man, ‘you would always lose against the system,’ but against these punks, he’s ‘got a shot.’ Guess who comes out on top in Walter Mosley’scompelling novel?”—NY Mag
"When a PI novel is written noir and gritty, in the style of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Chester Himes, but without the tropes that have become cliched, you can bet the author is Walter Mosley. . . Mosley’s writing is so rich, and his characters are not like anyone else’s, anywhere. It’s noir with a social conscience, noir with its thinking cap on."—Washington Post
"There's no writer like Walter Mosley and no protagonists like his creations: Easy Rawlins, Leonid McGill, and now Joe King, returning in a new era noir, facing tough moral choices, and pulling the reader — you — up close and into every fraught moment."—Powell's Books Blog
"Mosley again shows his talent for character building, not only in the many-sided Joe, as vulnerable as he is resilient, but also in a superb supporting cast, including Joe's daughter, Aja, and mercenary Oliya, who could easily front her own series... The second King Oliver novel lives up to the excitement generated by its Edgar-winning predecessor."—Booklist
"Mosley, a modern master of the noir form, brings readers a worthy follow-upto Down the River Unto the Sea. This time, Joe King Oliver is asked for a favor from a friend he can’t refuse, a case that forces him to look into the unsavory connections between white nationalists, Russians, and high finance. Mosley knows exactly how to craft a mystery that keeps you at the edge of your seat all the while forcing you to reckon with sinister forces at the heart of American society."—Dwyer Murphy, Crimereads
Library Journal
★ 01/13/2023
Mosley's second "King Oliver" title (after 2018's Down the River unto the Sea) has its former-cop-turned-PI protagonist, Joe King Oliver, swimming in shark-infested waters. He is hired by Roger Ferris during a legal battle with his children over control of their multibillion-dollar company. Complicating matters is Brenda, Joe's grandmother, who happens to be Roger's girlfriend. Summoned to Ferris's mansion, Joe assumes the topic of discussion will be the takeover. Instead, Ferris tells Joe about a man who has been "detained" by the government—a man whom he owes a debt. Then Joe's ex-wife Monica calls, begging him to help her new husband—the man who convinced her to let Joe sit and rot in jail instead of paying bail. But Joe loves their daughter, so he dives into this case. Soon, Joe's neck-deep in white supremacists, Russian mobsters, and shadow organizations, all looking to put him in a body bag. VERDICT Mosley demonstrates once again why he is a master of the craft, weaving a searing look at the concepts of race and social justice into a page-turning crime novel. A complex, compelling protagonist and eclectic supporting cast deepen the pleasure of the read.—Julie Ciccarelli
JANUARY 2023 - AudioFile
Narrator Dion Graham excels in this sequel to the Edgar Award winner DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA. Family ties draw investigator Joe “King” Oliver into finding out whether someone has framed a white nationalist for a crime he didn’t commit. In a second, unrelated case, King helps the husband of his ex-wife, Monica, whom police arrested for selling heating oil as diesel fuel. King agrees to investigate for the sake of his daughter, Aja. In a timely and thought-provoking story, Graham ratchets up the tension and pace as King peels layer upon layer of an onion that is rotten to the core. Portraying Oliya Ruez, King’s sidekick—with the emphasis on “kick”—Graham shines as wealthy and violent forces push King to the limit. R.O. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-01-25
At the behest of his friend Roger Ferris, a White billionaire, Black ex-cop Joe King Oliver investigates the government's mysterious detainment of a White nationalist.
The 91-year-old Ferris, who lives much of the time with Oliver's strong-willed 93-year-old grandmother, is sure that Alfred Xavier Quiller, poster boy for the alt-right group Men of Action, was set up on charges of murder and selling secrets to the Russians. As odious an individual as Quiller is, Oliver takes on the case as a defender of civil rights. That means returning to Rikers Island, where Quiller is being held—and where Oliver spent three hellish months in solitary after having been framed by dirty cops. The detective, introduced in Down the River Unto the Sea (2018), also has his hands full with the arrest of his ex-wife Monica's husband for his involvement with Russian mobsters in a corporate scheme to sell heating oil as diesel fuel. As knotty as the plot can get, the book is consistently lifted by the intelligence of its characters. Not your everyday zealot, Quiller is a scholar, poet, painter, animal rights activist, and genius inventor—and he's married to a Black woman whose attraction to him in spite of his racism makes her quite the enigma. Mosley is in top form as a social observer: Absolute poverty, muses his protagonist, is being imprisoned: "the experience of being slowly murdered by a state of being." Mosley's reportorial eye is equally sharp in making details count, including the skin tones of his characters. In Oliver's world, it matters that his grandmother is "black as a moonless night on an ancient sea." It also matters that she can get shot in the butt and shrug it off.
A strong second outing by Mosley's new hero.
