![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/down-the-river-unto-the-sea.jpg\")
<\/a>Walter Mosley writes his best about African-American men just outside society who try to fix society, men who had troubled childhoods, failed relationships and strong relationships with their children. These men, like Easy Rawlins, are detectives, and when they take on a case, they are \u201c\u2026as serious as a slave who said\u00a0no more\u00a0<\/em>to their chains.\u201d<\/p>\nJoe King Oliver is one of those men.<\/p>\n
Ten years ago, Joe was framed, jailed and bounced from the NYPD. A private detective now, he gets a letter from the woman who framed him, saying she\u2019s willing to help him clear his name. At the same time, another woman approaches him to help save A Free Man,\u00a0a journalist who she says was framed in the killing of two crooked cops. He takes on both cases.<\/p>\n
The investigative path Mosley puts him on is not a primrose one, planted with convenient clues. No, Mosley sends Oliver into the streets \u201c\u2026filled with madmen and redbirds, nameless cops and women who fooled you again and again.\u201d\u00a0 Out there, Joe thinks, \u201cAmerica was changing at a snail\u2019s pace in a high wind but until that gastropod mollusk reached its destination,\u201d he has a .45 in his pocket and \u201c\u2026eyes on all four corners at once.\u201d\u00a0 He can\u2019t avoid trouble, however, since he goes looking for it. After a couple of close calls that could have been his demise, Joe does what Mosley makes clear millions of black men do every day\u2014he dons a disguise to survive.<\/p>\n
His search leads him into an America of corrupt institutions, such as a Congress who \u201c\u2026have become lackeys to the rich. They all get made, paid and laid out of the picked pockets of men like me.\u201d\u00a0 Mosley\u2019s America is one where \u201cA man can live his whole life following the rules set down by happenstance and the cash-coated bait of security-cosseted morality; an entire lifetime and in the end he wouldn\u2019t have done one thing to be proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n
These are mean streets Raymond Chandler never imagined.<\/p>\n
Joe\u2019s search leads him through a gallery of characters as colorful as Mosley has ever created. There\u2019s the woman the journalist saved from the massage parlor whose \u201c\u2026figure \u2026 had betrayed her again and again from the age of thirteen.\u201d\u00a0 Joe talks to a boy named Burn, used by the crooked cops in so many ways, \u201cso high he could see into heaven.\u201d And Mel, the psychopathic clock repairman who says he owes his life to Joe, will do anything for him \u2014 and does. With his help, Joe makes it through, and delivers justice everywhere you look \u2014 but in the courts and newspapers.<\/p>\n
Joe King Oliver is good enough to stand on his own, or join the ranks of Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill in a series. He\u2019s one for the\u00a0books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Water Mosley is another one of Bob Moyer’s favorite authors (I like him a lot, too), and here Bob takes a look at one of Mosley’s interesting and crusading detectives. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA. By Walter Mosley. Mulholland\u00a0Books. 322 pages. $27. Walter Mosley writes his best about African-American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[590,5],"tags":[638,1046,27,79],"class_list":["post-2331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-mysteries","tag-detective-ficition","tag-joe-king-oliver","tag-mystery","tag-walter-mosley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2331"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2335,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/revisions\/2335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}