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Summary
Summary
In the latest and most surprising novel in the bestselling Leonid McGill series, Leonid finds himself caught between his sins of the past and an all-too-vivid present.
Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed with her friend. The weekend before, $6.8 million had been stolen from Rutgers Assurance Corp., whose offices are across the street from where Zella worked. Zella didn't remember shooting Harry, but she didn't deny it either. The district attorney was inclined to call it temporary insanity-until the police found $80,000 from the Rutgers heist hidden in her storage space.
For reasons of his own, Leonid McGill is convinced of Zella's innocence. But as he begins his investigation, his life begins to unravel. His wife is drinking more than she should. His oldest son has dropped out of college and moved in with an exprostitute. His youngest son is working for him and trying to stay within the law. And his father, whom he thought was long dead, has turned up under an alias.
A gripping story of murder, greed, and retribution, All I Did Was Shoot My Man is also the poignant tale of one man's attempt to stay connected to his family.
Author Notes
Walter Mosley was born in Los Angeles, California on January 12, 1952. He graduated from Johnson State College in Vermont. His first book, Devil in a Blue Dress, was published in 1990, won a John Creasy Award for best first novel, and was made into a motion picture starring Denzel Washington in 1995. He is the author of the Easy Rawlins Mystery series, the Leonid McGill Mystery series, and the Fearless Jones series. His other works include Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, 47, Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, and Twelve Steps toward Political Revelation. He has received numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award, and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Mosley's fourth Leonid McGill mystery (after 2011's When the Thrill Is Gone), the best in the series to date, the New York City PI tries to atone for a misdeed from his checkered past. Eight years earlier, McGill helped frame Zella Grisham for a part in the biggest Wall Street robbery in history-$58 million stolen from Rutgers Assurance Corp. Zella was guilty of shooting her man, Harry Tangelo, when she found him in bed with her best friend, Minnie Lesser, but the eight years she served were due to the frame, not the shooting. McGill manages to get Zella released, setting in motion a chain of deadly events. Meanwhile, his difficult family life reaches full boil with each of his three adult children, Twill, Dimitri, and Shelly, as well as with his hard-drinking wife, Katrina. Unraveling the truth behind the robbery and the unrecovered millions tests McGill's skills to the utmost in this complex, satisfying entry. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Leonid McGill has spent a life in crime but has managed to avoid the long arm of the law. Now he works as a de facto investigator, valued because of his access to the criminal underworld and his familiarity with the police. Years ago, Zella Grisham found her lover, Harry Tangelo, in bed with another woman. Zella had no memory of shooting Harry, but all the evidence pointed to her. After seven years in prison, Zella is out and looking to clear her name. Who better to help than Leonid? He begins the investigation but is constantly distracted by his own dissolving family. By tacit agreement, his wife, Katrina, has taken many lovers, looking for a man to take her away from Leonid. No one has fit the bill, leaving her frustrated and depressed. Now she's drinking far too much. One of McGill's sons is moving in with an ex-prostitute, the other has a talent for crime, and McGill's father, long thought dead, resurfaces under an alias. Mosley has long used the crime novel as a framework for poignant explorations of the human condition. McGill is a dogged, tough investigator, but those qualities aren't necessarily going to hold his family together. Compassion, wisdom, and forgiveness are needed and prove as tough to find as Harry Tangelo's real killer. Mosley is a master, and this is among his best. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Mosley always draws a crowd, but his last few novels have been less than his best. A return to form here, backed by strong marketing, should signal strong sales.--Lukowsky, Wes Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
McGill's efforts to protect Zella and his own large, fractious family take him all over the city, from an East River mansion with priceless art in the living room to a shabby house in Coney Island with a decomposing corpse in the laundry room. These purposeful wanderings put him in contact with a profusion of wonderfully shifty characters like Sweet Lemon Charles, a "lifetime thief" turned poet, and a retired assassin named Hush who currently owns a fleet of limousines. McGill, of course, is the most vivid character of them all, smart and tough and huge of heart, but decidedly touchy about his diminutive stature. Although skin color is also important to this middle-aged black man, height is what really matters - and there's a reason for that. "Big men throw around their weight from an early age," McGill reflects. "At some point they assume this is a God-given right. Every now and then it's good for a short guy like me to disrupt that surety." Spoken like a man. A very big man. More! More! More! Fans are always clamoring for additional information about the personal lives of their favorite detectives. But who knew that even authors sometimes wish they'd been more forthcoming about their sleuths' early careers? In her 17th Anna Pigeon mystery, THE ROPE (Minotaur, $25.99), Nevada Barr goes back to 1995 to explain the dramatic circumstances that determined why this National Park Service ranger decided to go into law enforcement. "I believe more women should carry guns," Anna says at the end of the book. "I believe armed women will make the world a better place. Women need to come to think of themselves not as victims but as dangerous." But what drove this reserved woman to make such an extraordinarily defiant statement? As a stage manager who fled New York after the loss of her husband, Anna has little wilderness experience and no commitment to her job at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area on the Arizona-Utah border. But after witnessing a murder, she wakes up naked, injured and at the mercy of whoever threw her into a 30-foot-deep pit. It's a harrowing survival story, well imagined and forcefully told, about a brutal act that inspires a weak woman to become a strong one. Like every mother's child, every author's detective is exceptional. But Carol O'Connell takes it way over the top with the mythic scale of her mad-genius New York City cop, Kathy Mallory. In THE CHALK GIRL (Putnam, $25.95), the ineffably gorgeous and phenomenally gifted detective (Mallory the Machine to her browbeaten colleagues) takes over the protection of an 8-year-old girl called Coco who witnessed a grisly murder in Central Park. Coco has Williams syndrome, a genetic condition that accounts for her angelic features and extreme craving for physical affection - qualities that leave her vulnerable to predators like Uncle Red and whoever strung him up in a tree and let the rats have at him. Mallory's idiosyncrasies make her a natural for this bizarre case, but her professional skills and belligerent manner are broadcast in a comic-book idiom so lurid it would make even Lisbeth Salander blush. With its inviting typeface, touchy-feely paper stock and come-hither cover illustration of an English street scene shimmering under gaslight, THE ANATOMIST'S APPRENTICE (Kensington, paper, $15), Tessa Harris's first historical novel about a pioneering American anatomist in London, pretty much jumps into your hands. There's even a glossary (with entries for "French pox" and "miasma," even "grave wax") to let us know exactly what we're in for with this densely plotted yarn about a crafty 18th-century poisoner wreaking havoc on the Oxfordshire estate of a noble family. Once he's finally allowed access to the corpse of the young Earl Crick, Dr. Thomas Silkstone does a grimly admirable job of countering this wickedness by practicing his own blend of scientific arts. Unfortunately, the author seems not to know when she's onto a good thing, and proceeds to gum up the fascinating details of early forensics with a sticky romance and Grand Guignol contrivances. Nonetheless, we await - indeed, demand - the sequel. Walter Mosley comes from the Raymond Chandler pick-up-sticks school of plot construction.
Kirkus Review
Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In this fourth Leonid McGill mystery (after When the Thrill Is Gone), Mosley uses his exceptional storytelling skills to depict how his conflicted and compassionate PI sabotages himself as he battles to redeem himself and make amends to his family and coworkers. McGill is hired to investigate a strange case in which Zella Grisham admits to shooting her scheming husband after catching him in bed with another woman. Yet she's fuzzy about the $80,000 found in her closet that was part of a $6 million heist. Out on the mean streets of Manhattan, McGill reacquaints himself with his estranged, alcoholic wife; his misguided, eldest son, who left college to live with a prostitute; and his youngest son, who chooses to work as McGill's partner. VERDICT General readers and Mosley fans will appreciate his characteristically fine writing as well as the internal struggles Mosley inflicts on his protagonists. [See Prepub Alert, 7/18/11.]-Jerry P. Miller, Cambridge, MA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
