Sunday, May 16, 2010

Known to Evil by Walter Mosley


Mosley has another winner on his hand with Known to Evil, which continues the story of private investigator Leonid McGill. As a favor for a powerful man, Leonid agrees to check on the welfare of a young woman, but when he arrives to her apartment building, Leonid immediately becomes a person of interest in a police murder investigation. In the apartment where Leonid was headed, a woman and a man are found dead. To prove his innocence to the police, Leonid must find out everything he can about the young woman he was supposed to have checked on, despite the adamant instructions made by the powerful man for him not to.

Leonid is also dealing with problems in his personal life. He believes his wife is having another secret affair, his ex-girl friend is dating a man, who is trying to force Leonid out of the office building, and his two sons have disappeared with a young Russian prostitute.

Mosley’s ease of writing these two unconnected stories and having Leonid deal with them makes him a master at his craft. Known to Evil was a much stronger book than the first, mostly because the readers knows Leonid McGill and the sub-characters at this point, which didn’t require Mosley to go into any deep back story on the cast of characters.