Change. Change is tough. When a favorite serial novelist introduces a new protagonist set in a different place, a reader departs from the familiar and either embraces or rejects the new character. I embraced Leonid McGill, the hero of Walter Mosley’s new novel, The Long Fall. This 53-year-old former boxer is known as LT, and he is at a transforming period in his life: turning away from being a bad guy, and trying to become a good guy. The flawed hero provides ample opportunity for character development, and Mosley presents LT as the kind of complicated modern man formed by a past, and fighting to overcome that history and live better today. A police lieutenant works hard to put LT in jail; a teenage son, Twill, is on the verge of irreversible criminal acts; and he and his wife are in a loveless relationship. Following the successful completion of what seemed like a legitimate detecting assignment to find the identity and locale of four men, LT learns that he was used by somebody to exert revenge for something, and he became the unwitting accomplice to murder. Change is tough, and LT is a tough guy who readers will cheer on as he tries to change his life. As expected from Mosley, The Long Fall is well-written, and the characters are all memorable and come to life on every page.
Rating: Three-star (Recommended)
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