Mark's Book Blog: The Long Fall by Walter Mosley

Saturday, January 16, 2010

The Long Fall by Walter Mosley - A-

The Long Fall by Walter Mosley was just a fun read. I wouldn't call it "literature" (read the previous word in the most pretentious way you possibly can--everything we read need not be, and everything I read certainly is not, necessarily "literature").

Mr. Mosley had previously written the Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins mysteries. I hadn't read his novels before. I must admit that I think I'm losing my marbles because, as I said on a previous post, I have no idea how or why I read The Long Fall.

As each year comes to a close, I peruse best books lists and add books that look interesting to a wish list on Amazon and/or BN (I know, I know, it would be helpful to coordinate those, but they have completely different books on them; that's probably part of the reason I ran in to this problem in the first place). Anyway, The Long Fall shows up on my wish list. I got a holiday Amazon gift certificate and bought a few books, including The Long Fall. Now, I can't find the novel on any year end list or figure out why I added it to my wish list or why I bought it. But I was pleasantly surprised and glad I bought it.

The Long Fall is a book written in the noir style, and it's not dated or hokey like some of the detective novels written in the 1950s or 60s can appear. Mr. Mosley's introduces a new private investigator protagonist, Leonid McGill, a man with a checkered past that this first novel only begins to explore. McGill is hired to find some men who begin turning up dead after he finds them. McGill then investigates what exactly he's been put in the middle of. (Big problem with the preceding "sentence." Ending a sentence with a preposition. I HATE doing that. I wasn't going to go, "TO what exactly he's been put in the middle." That just sounded pretentious. And as discussed above, I'm definitely not "pro pretentious.")

I very much enjoyed this novel. The second Leonid McGill novel comes out in the next few months, and I expect to read it as well. I might pick up an Easy Rollins novel (so many books, so little time). Whether you will enjoy The Long Fall depends in part on whether you like noir novels.

Live long, read and prosper. We'll leave the light on for you.

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Mark's Book Blog

Welcome to Mark's Book Blog!

Why did I set this up? Several reasons.

1. I'm constantly asked for book recommendations. I often cannot remember what I've read recently and, consequently, struggle for a recommendation. This will keep me up to date.

2. We're all busy. Sometimes I forget what I liked and what I didn't like about a book I read a month or two ago. As a result, this blog commits me to memorialize a book shortly after reading the book.

3. I, too, want book recommendations from those I trust (so I may or may not read your recommendation). From this blog, you can see what I've liked--you may not like my taste, may never come back to the blog--that's ok. If, though, you like some or all of what I like, tell me. And, more importantly, tell me what else I'd like!

Here's my recommendation scale--I will rate all books I read (subject to my ability to rate a book that I stop reading for good reason). The recommendation scale has gone through many iterations since inception of the blog and is effective for all books recommended on or after December 29, 2009. For the recommendation scale applicable to books recommended prior to that time, go here.

This blog uses a "grading" system. In order to accomplish the blog's goal of "recommending" books, the grading scale works out like this:

A - Highly recommended

B - Recommended

C - OK, you might like it

D - A waste of time

F - A HUGE waste of time

If a book, let's say it's a sports-themed, non-fiction book, earns a recommendation in the "A" range, the blog post will note that the book is "Highly recommended for fans of [we'll just insert the sport of tonsil hockey here as a placeholder]." In other words, even an "A" recommendation may not be a book that I suggest you read. It depends on your tastes. Certainly some books in the "A" range will be recommended to all.

One other note. I am generally a stickler for grammar and punctuation (for using made-up words like "stickler," not so much). As I've stated in various posts, I am well aware that this blog does not utilize the well-established "underline book titles" convention. There are some places where book titles are in quotes. There are other places where book titles are merely capitalized. While I apologize in advance for being such a heathen as to ignore this convention, it bothers me. It really does. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me up nights. Seriously. I decided, however, about 50 posts in that I would make the lack of consistency in the identification of book titles the consistency for the site. Therefore and henceforth, I will utilize whatever convention I want in any willy nilly fashion I see fit.

Mark

Mark's Book Blog

Saturday, January 16, 2010

The Long Fall by Walter Mosley - A-

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