Known to Evil (Leonid McGill Series #2) by Walter Mosley

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From the Publisher

The Walter Mosley and his new hero, Leonid McGill, are back in the new New York Times-bestselling mystery series that's already being hailed as a classic of contemporary noir.

Leonid McGill-the protagonist introduced in The Long Fall, the book that returned Walter Mosley to bestseller lists nationwide -is still fighting to stick to his reformed ways while the world around him pulls him in every other direction. He has split up with his girlfriend, Aura, because his new self won't let him leave his wife-but then Aura's new boyfriend starts angling to get Leonid kicked out of his prime, top-of-the­skyscraper office space. Meanwhile, one of his sons seems to have found true love-but the girl has a shady past that's all of sudden threatening the whole McGill family-and his other son, the charming rogue Twilliam, is doing nothing but enabling the crisis.

Most ominously of all, Alfonse Rinaldo, the mysterious power-behind- the-throne at City Hall, the fixer who seems to control every little thing that happens in New York City, has a problem that even he can't fix- and he's come to Leonid for help. It seems a young woman has disappeared, leaving murder in her wake, and it means everything to Rinaldo to track her down. But he won't tell McGill his motives, which doesn't quite square with the new company policy- but turning down Rinaldo is almost impossible to even contemplate.

Known to Evil delivers on all the promise of the characters and story lines introduced in The Long Fall, and then some. It careens fast and deep into gritty, glittery contemporary Manhattan, making the city pulse in a whole new way, and it firmly establishes Leonid McGill as one of the mystery world's most iconic, charismatic leading men.

The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio

The voice of the narrator—low, intense and soaked in melancholy—is what hooks us in Known to Evil…[Mosley's] characters…live and breathe genre lingo, even when they're just talking with their fists.

Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Mosley scores a clean knockout in his excellent second mystery featuring New York City PI Leonid McGill (after 2009’s The Long Fall). Still striving to atone for some of the lives he’s ruined, the 54-year-old McGill laments that there are “no straight lines in the life or labors of the private detective.” Instead, crises crowd him at every turn. A powerful, shadowy city hall official wants McGill to locate and protect a young woman named Tara Lear, a task complicated by a murder. Older son Dimitri is involved with a Russian hooker whose pimp doesn’t want to let her go. Younger son Twill, trying to help his brother, risks violating parole restrictions. Relations with wife Katrina and lover Aura Ullman, “with her Aryan eyes and Ethiopian skin,” are in flux. The ex-boxer has an eclectic group in his corner, including computer whiz Tiny “Bug” Bateman, but McGill is the one taking the blows and meting out punishment in this contemporary noir gem. Author tour. (Mar.)

Library Journal

It would be easy—but ill advised—to overlook Leonid McGill, a short, stocky, bald, middle-aged black man with a worried expression. At any given New York minute, though, McGill just might explode in your face or end up dead at your feet. He and his beautiful Scandinavian wife of 23 years have three children and an "arrangement"; he's trained himself to appreciate that one of the kids is actually his own. Still trying to shake off his past ties to crime, McGill works as a PI, mainly on the right side of the law. Fingered by an NYC power broker to investigate a woman, he arrives at her apartment to find it overrun by cops. Someone there has been shot and her assailant stabbed to death. It's enough to test even this dark knight's commitment to righting wrongs. VERDICT With his second McGill outing (after The Long Fall), the neo-noir master proves that this new series has legs; this title will appeal to anybody who enjoys George Pelecanos's take on contemporary DC as well as longtime Easy Rawlins fans. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/09.]—Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO

Kirkus Reviews

An offer he can't refuse leads Leonid McGill (The Long Fall, 2009, etc.) on a grim tour that takes him from New York's executive suites to its lowest dives. Alphonse Rinaldo, special assistant to the City of New York, wants information he can't be seen to want. He needs discreet inquiries made about Angelique Tara Lear so that he can rest assured that she's doing all right. Through his legman, Sam Strange, he engages soiled ex-fixer McGill for the job, and a bevy of police cars around Angie's building instantly informs McGill that she's not a bit all right. FIT student/cocktail waitress Wanda Soa has been shot to death inside Angie's apartment, presumably by the unknown heavy who was fatally stabbed around the same time. The discovery launches McGill into a free-wheeling investigation in which he bounces like a pinball from high-priced lawyers to building supers to sex-slavers, all the while pretending to more identities than can be found in the Manhattan phone directory. His inquiries are frequently interrupted by his continued struggles to rescue Ron Sharkey, a businessman he'd framed years ago, from the dire consequences of his years in prison, and his frazzled attempts to deal with his unfaithful wife and wayward sons, who make his domestic life just as chaotic as his professional life. This time, however, these sidelights provide ballast for a case whose complications are so labyrinthine that you'll need a score card to keep track of the suspects, motives and incidental felonies. A rich collection of individual scenes and people as memorable as the tangled plot is forgettable.