THE LONG FALL

The creator of Easy Rawlins, Socrates Fortlow and Fearless Jones introduces a new detective struggling to live down his checkered past in present-day New York.

Leonid McGill has never killed anyone maliciously, but he’s done plenty of other bad things. Still working as a private eye in his 50s, he’s decided to expiate his sins by going “from crooked to only slightly bent.” So he’s not eager to help Albany shamus Ambrose Thurman track down four men for vague and unpersuasive reasons, especially after he learns that one is dead, a second is in prison and a third is in a holding cell. Who pays $10,000 to locate men like these unless some further crime is involved? McGill isn’t any happier about finding a union accountant for midlevel mobster Tony “The Suit” Towers. And he’s deeply troubled when his computer spying in his own home tells him that Twill, his wife Katrina’s 16-year-old son, plans to kill the father of a girl who’s been sending him distraught e-mails. But the PI’s heart drops to his shoes when he realizes that someone is executing the men he’s been hired to locate for Thurman.

Plotting has never been Mosley’s strong point, but McGill, a red-diaper baby, ex-boxer and a man eternally at war with himself, may be his most compelling hero yet.