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)

Walter Mosley breaks every rule in the private-detective-story stylebook in his new mystery featuring Leonid McGill, AND SOMETIMES I WONDER ABOUT YOU (Doubleday, $26.95). His New York sleuth’s disorderly domestic affairs keep threatening to overwhelm the crime elements, and a vital piece of the plot isn’t introduced until midway through the book. And when Mosley does wrap things up, he makes no effort to connect any of the multiple subplots.

So why the devotion? To begin with, McGill is one of the most humane (and likable) P.I.s in the business. He’s a short man, and every time a male character is introduced McGill automatically estimates his height. (“Just a centimeter or two north of six feet”; “Standing face to face, we were the same height”; “Medium-­sized. . . . but with bad posture.”) Although he hesitates to call himself a family man, he’s dedicated to his clinically depressed wife and the brood of grown children he considers his own. And despite being a hard man with a rough past, he does his best by his clients, even taking on the posthumous case of a despondent man he regrets turning away: “I could afford to do a good deed for some poor schlub down on his luck.” Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, May 31 at 4:00pm EDT, The New York Times Bestselling author Walter Mosley talks about his book LITTLE GREEN, with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Senior Editor, The Atlantic. Watch the conversation live, here.

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My first memory and so, in some essential way, the beginning of my life starts with me on my knees in front of an old console television set. I was 3 years old and didn’t know where I was or even that the TV was there because my eyes were closed. There was a sense of excitement tingling in my shoulders and thrumming at the back of my head; an electricity that made me want to laugh out loud, but I didn’t laugh.

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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.