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<\/a>Joe King Oliver doesn\u2019t really want to take the job his grandmother\u2019s billionaire boyfriend Roger Ferris offers him. Ferris wants him to prove that Xavier Quiller has been falsely and illegally imprisoned. His daughter doesn\u2019t want him to do it because Quiller is the most outrageous white nationalist in America. His grandmother doesn\u2019t want him to do it because Ferris is \u201c\u2026 rich and spoiled\u00a0and don\u2019t give a goddamn about little people like you and me.\u201d\u00a0 Joe hesitates, but takes the job:\u00a0\u201c\u2026. a company that specialized in prison systems, that had the power to pull anyone they wished out of one country and deposit them in another, a business whose product was the abrogation of human rights\u2026well, as much as I wanted to, I couldn\u2019t turn my back on that.\u201d<\/p>\nJoe has a personal as well as a political dog in this fight, however. A few years back when he was a cop, he was set up then shut up in solitary in Riker\u2019s Island, where Quiller is held. Now he has to re-visit that trauma.<\/p>\n
Twice. Because just as he sets out, his ex-wife calls him to say her new husband has been arrested on mob money-laundering charges, and is being held incommunicado in Riker\u2019s as well. Joe reluctantly agrees to help \u2014 for his daughter\u2019s sake \u2014 and starts off on a dangerous journey, a man of color making his way through a racist world.<\/p>\n
And what a way it is. Joe\u2019s journey shows us places we would never see, people we would never meet. He takes us from the grandeur of a high-rise billionaires\u2019 club to the gritty streets of Brownsville, N.Y.; from a safe house with a torture chamber in Vermont to a two-story apartment buried in Van Cortland Park; from a motel in Atlanta to Dingo\u2019s Retreat Motel in Hoboken. Along the way, Joe gets help from the psychotic killer Melquarth, who helps him squeeze the info out of a Russian mobster he needs to clear his ex\u2019s husband. Melquarth also hires a body guard cum assassin named Oliyah Ruez to protect Joe. The world\u2019s luckiest gambler Lamont Charles, the gun-runner and his all-round bad-ass Uncle Rags, and, most important, the white nationalist\u2019s black wife, Mathilda Prim, all make dramatic appearances. It\u2019s Mathilda Prim who holds the key to what the billionaire wanted at the beginning of the story, which Mosley does not reveal until the end of the story.<\/p>\n
In between, examples of the black man\u2019s place in the modern world abound, as do examples of this black author\u2019s artistry. \u201cHelping for no reason,\u201d says Joe when\u00a0observed aiding a woman across the street, \u201cthat is life at its best. Most people in your cities don\u2019t know it. Almost everyone in our business thinks that they cannot afford kindness. They don\u2019t have a reason for living and so go through life like the dead.\u201d\u00a0When Joe first sees Oliyah, he thinks she has a smile that \u201c\u2026felt as if I had been walking on a paved road that gave way to pounded earth that then became a less-trodden path through a wood \u2026 She was both a fortress wall and the only home anyone would ever need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every page has a turn of phrase worth noting. Mosley is not just one of America\u2019s best mystery novelists, nor just one of America\u2019s best black novelists. He\u2019s flat out one of America\u2019s best novelists.<\/p>\n
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Bob Moyer reads a lot and reviews a lot of books. If he had to name his favorite authors, I’m guessing Walter Moseley would be at or near the top of the list. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer EVERY MAN A KING. By Walter Mosley. 324 pages. $28. Joe King Oliver doesn\u2019t really want to […]<\/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":[425,1343,79],"class_list":["post-3088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-mysteries","tag-detective-fiction","tag-king-arthur-mystery","tag-walter-mosley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088","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=3088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3090,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions\/3090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}