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<\/a> Short, stocky, balding, not to mention black, Leonid McGill doesn\u2019t impress as a protagonist.\u00a0 His punch belies his looks, however.\u00a0 Brought up on the streets, he bought into a life of crime as a handyman for the mob, becoming a con man, a thief, a killer, and a fixer, among others.\u00a0 Along the way, he also took on roles as a husband, a father, a lover, and a friend to some of the most outrageous characters you\u2019ll meet in a Manhattan mystery novel.\u00a0 The crowning achievement in his life of crime, however, was special:\u00a0 \u201cI was Typhoid Mary\u2019s meaner older brother, the ire of Moses on the unsuspecting peasants of the Nile Valley.\u00a0I planted false evidence, sicced the dogs on\u00a0unsuspecting citizens simply because I didn\u2019t like them and was being paid to trap someone, anyone, that would fit the bill.\u00a0I was a minor, mischievous deity loosed upon na\u00efve humanity for the entertainment of the gods.\u201d<\/p>\nThe story here begins as Leonid meets Zella, one of the 108 poor souls he framed, at the bus station.\u00a0 As she says, ALL I DID WAS SHOOT MY MAN<\/em>, but Leonid saw to it that she took a fall for a major heist of a lot of money.<\/p>\n He then saw the light some years back, and he has been trying to straighten out some of the lives he sent spinning out of control.\u00a0 Unfortunately for him, his family and anyone involved with the heist and\/or its cover-up, someone gets exercised about Zella\u2019s release from prison.\u00a0 Everyone\u2019s endangered, including his family, and Leonid sets off on a literally feverish pace.<\/p>\n Mosley lets the plot follow the flow of Leonid\u2019s life:\u00a0 \u201cTime on this earth for me was navigating the Problem River, making it from side to side, connecting contradictory concepts, struggling against the wind and current, the sun, and creatures, both great and small, but all deadly.\u201d<\/p>\n Mosley\u2019s winding narrative makes for an interesting journey, as Leonid travels from an upper East Side penthouse to Long Island bathroom and many points in between looking for answers \u2013 but a confusing one at times.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to keep the players straight without a scorecard, like the woman who is secretary to the executive at the security firm trying to find the money who was the woman in bed with the man that Zella shot.<\/p>\n Leonid finally figures it out (so do we), but he\u2019s left with one mystery that has trailed him from the very top of this series \u2014 what to do about his father. Tolstoy McGill\u00a0walked out of his family\u2019s life, but left his socialist teachings behind in a little boy\u2019s mind.\u00a0Those concepts still color Leonid\u2019s outlook, and he doesn\u2019t know if he wanted \u201c\u2026to kiss or kill my father; find or forget him.\u201d\u00a0 At the end of the book, all of us are left wondering if he will get the chance to do either.\u00a0Only time, and the next installment, will tell.<\/p>\n