Although it wasn’t done by design, this year’s 10 Best Crime Novels fall neatly into various subgenres. So what you’re really getting are my choices for: Best Rural Mystery Set in Mississippi, Best Mystery Featuring a Drug-Addicted Private Eye, Best Historical Mystery Set in the 14th Century and so on.

CHARCOAL JOE. By Walter Mosley. (Doubleday, $26.95.)Mosley’s mellow private eye, Easy Rawlins, is talking his way through another case in this period mystery set in 1968, when black neighborhoods are still seething with rage after the Watts riots. In this heated climate, Easy is . . . well, easy. No furies in his brain, no fires in his gut, just an unquenchable curiosity about people and their obsessions. Favorite characters like Jackson Blue and Fearless Jones provide backup for Easy, an unconventional hero who’s unafraid to lower his fists and use his brain.

(via The New York Times)

What are you in the mood to read this summer? This year boasts an unusual volume of stories exploring the thrilling and thorny stuff that makes us human. We think of them as books that make a difference—every one of them worth the plunge!

Charcoal Joe

By Walter Mosley
320 pages; Doubleday
Available at: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | iBooks |IndieBound
 
It’s never easy being Easy Rawlins, especially when his main squeeze, Bonnie, cuts and runs just when he’s ready to pop the question. Next thing he knows, murder and intrigue are afoot, and we’re cruising the City of Angels in ’68, chock-full of degenerates, a few backsliding do-gooders, and everything in between. This is the 14th installment in Mosley’s celebrated mystery series. We say keep ’em coming.

Walter Mosley has been called “America’s Blackest Jewish Writer.” His father was black and mother Jewish and even though he self-identifies as black, he speaks often about his Jewish heritage.

So, it’s fitting he will be at the St. Paul Jewish Community Center to talk about his new crime novel featuring ex-boxer and P.I. Leonid McGill, as well as being Jewish and why he identifies with Isaac Bashevis Singer.

McGill, a short, black man who still works out at the gym, is leading a messy life in his fifth outing. He meets a beautiful woman who has stolen a valuable ring from a mobster and embarks on a torrid affair with her even though his wife is hospitalized after trying to commit suicide. Also, he’s in love with Aura, who manages his apartment building, but they’re taking a break and he misses her.

When McGill turns away a homeless man who wants him to track down a woman with a secret, and the man is later found dead, McGill takes on his case out of guilt for the way he treated the guy.

A third thread in this complicated plot — or plots — is the involvement of McGill’s son, Twill, with a dangerous, Fagan-like figure who is running hundreds of young people in various scams and killings.

McGill is an interesting mix of integrity when it comes to his cases but less morality when it comes to his love life — or maybe sex life would be a better word. But he’s likable and cares for Twill and his other adult kids.

“And Sometimes I Wonder About You” has a lot of moving parts and readers have to pay attention to the characters and what’s going on.

IF YOU GO

What: Walter Mosley reads from “And Sometimes I Wonder About You” in Twin Cities Jewish Book Series.

When, where: 7 p.m. Thursday, St. Paul Jewish Community Center, 1375 St. Paul Ave., St. Paul

Admission: $25

Information: 651-698-0751

Publisher, price: Doubleday, $26.95

(via Pioneer Press)

And Sometimes I Wonder About You: A Leonid McGill Mystery by Walter Mosley (Doubleday) – Leonid McGill slogs his way through a morass of personal and professional problems in Mosley’s outstanding fifth mystery featuring the New York City PI (after 2012’s All I Did Was Shoot My Man). People giving him trouble include a modern-day Fagin, who’s entangled with McGill’s son Twill in some criminal enterprises; the ex-fiancé of a woman McGill is involved with; and a client he rejected. Women have always complicated McGill’s life and continue to do so: his emotionally fragile wife, Katrina, is in a sanatorium after a failed suicide attempt; his sometime lover, Aura Ullman, is keeping her distance; and he’s attracted to the beautiful Marella Herzog, whom he meets on the train from Philadelphia to New York. McGill deals with his professional problems with a combination of brute force and wiliness, while the women in his life tie him in emotional knots. The return of his father, Tolstoy McGill, the left-wing revolutionary who abandoned his family years ago, roils McGill even more than the women.

October 3, 2011, New York, NY—Doubleday has acquired two new Easy Rawlins mysteries and another novel by critically acclaimed, bestselling author Walter Mosley, it was announced today by William Thomas, Senior Vice President, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of Doubleday. Gerald Howard, Vice President & Executive Editor, acquired world rights in all languages from Gloria Loomis of Watkins/Loomis Agency. The first Easy Rawlins mystery, currently untitled, is scheduled to be published in 2013. The novel, also untitled, is a noirish account of a porn star’s determination to escape her dangerous milieu, and is scheduled for 2014, to be followed a year later by the next Easy Rawlins mystery.

Devil in A Blue Dress, Mosley’s first novel and his first Easy Rawlins mystery, was published in 1990. It was made into an acclaimed film starring Denzel Washington as the title character, and a television series is currently in development. The Easy Rawlins books have been translated into 21 languages, and the series has sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide.

Howard, who edited Devil in a Blue Dress and several subsequent Mosley works when he was at W.W. Norton, said: “It’s an honor and a kick to be back working with Walter again. I’ve never had more fun with a pencil in my hand than while editing his supple, swinging sentences, and I’ve always felt that no other American novelist explores questions of race and identity with a fresher eye and a deeper penetration.”

Walter Mosley is the author of more than 34 critically acclaimed books, including the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The Nation, among other publications. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in Brookyln, New York.

The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group is a division of Random House, Inc., whose parent company is Bertelsmann AG.

John Wells’ Warner Bros TV-based production company has sold Easy Rawlins to NBC.  NBC’s Easy Rawlins is based on Walter Mosley’s best-selling novels about black P.I. Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, who finds himself solving crimes and dealing with the changing world around him in 1960s Los Angeles. (The books are set from the 1940s to 1960s.) Easy is a reluctant, self-taught P.I. with a conscience and a soul — and he easily slips between white Los Angeles and the black underground. Mosley will write the series adaptation with Southland co-executive producer Cheo Coker.

Full story at on deadline.com