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The Long Fall
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The Long Fall
Unavailable
The Long Fall
Audiobook8 hours

The Long Fall

Written by Walter Mosley

Narrated by Mirron Willis

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

His name is etched on the door of his Manhattan office: LEONID McGILL, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. It's a name that takes a little explaining, but he's used to it. "Daddy was a communist and great-great- Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland. You know, the black man's family tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story."

Ex-boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades mostly in cash and favors: McGill's an old-school P.I. working a city that's gotten fancy all around him. Fancy or not, he has always managed to get by-keep a roof over the head of his wife and kids, and still manage a little fun on the side-mostly because he's never been above taking a shady job for a quick buck. But like the city itself, McGill is turning over a new leaf, "decided to go from crooked to slightly bent."

New York City in the twenty-first century is a city full of secrets-and still a place that reacts when you know where to poke and which string to pull. That's exactly the kind of thing Leonid McGill knows how to do. As soon as The Long Fall begins, with McGill calling in old markers and greasing NYPD palms to unearth some seemingly harmless information for a high-paying client, he learns that even in this cleaned-up city, his commitment to the straight and narrow is going to be constantly tested.

And we learn that with this protagonist, this city, this time, Mosley has tapped a rich new vein that's inspiring his best work since the classic Devil in a Blue Dress.

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LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 24, 2009
ISBN9781101029619
Unavailable
The Long Fall
Author

Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley is the author of over twenty critically acclaimed books and his work has been translated into twenty-one languages. His popular mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins began with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990, which was later made into a film starring Denzel Washington. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he now lives in New York.

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Reviews for The Long Fall

Rating: 3.6938224719101123 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

178 ratings27 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    That was an exciting thriller. It's just a shame that my library does not have any sequels to this series.Leonid McGill is a private investigator with a dark past. He was once a henchman and a thug in the NY Underworld. Their arm is long and they still try to pull him into their machinations, even if McGill now only wants to work on the legal side. But he needs the money to feed his family and pay for his luxurious office, so his actions are always a bailout between good and evil. During his investigations, corpses pave his way. Thugs and killers are hired to get him out of the way, but McGill still keeps up with boxing and is better than his opponents.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    laborious reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Each time I read a Walter Mosley book--which isn't very often--I wonder to myself why I don't read every Walter Mosley book. Each one I've read is a beautiful, violent gem. In simple, unflinching, often poetic language Mosely writes hard-boiled detective fiction like no one writing today.The Long Fall introduces a new character, Leonid McGill, an African American private investigator in his fifties. For those who wonder how a black man comes by such a name, McGill--or LT, as most people call him--replies that, "My father was a Communist. He tried to cut me from the same red cloth. He believed in living with everybody but his family. McGill is my slave name." LT boxed in his youth, and still spars to keep in shape; his short compact frame is heavily muscled and deceptively strong. In the past LT pursued a less than ethical career path, working for the mob and other lowlifes, killing--or, at least, being the conduit for information that would lead to death--when the job called for it. In recent years, though, he's gone, well, if not straight, then, as he would put it, just slightly bent. It's a struggle.The Long Fall opens with LT tracking down, for a client once removed whose identity he doesn't know, the last of four young men known only by their youthful nicknames. One, he discovers is dead, one is in prison, one is out on bail and awaiting sentencing, and the fourth has made a good life for himself in the straight world. Within days of his finding these men, the two out in the world are dead and an attempt has been made on the life of the imprisoned man as well. Not long after, an attempt is made on LT's life.The next couple of hundred pages follow McGill's quest to discover why. Why was he hired to find these men, and by whom? Why are they now being killed? Why does somebody want him dead? Why is it so hard to do the right thing? During the course of his investigation LT is beaten, interrogated by the police and even has to go to Albany (he's a Manhattanite born and bred).The novel is rich with detail, yet there's nothing in it that shouldn't be there. Leonid McGill's home life is as complex as his work life. He's married to a Scandinavian woman and is father to three children, only one of whom is actually his biologically (although they don't know this). His wife recently left him but has now returned, amping up the housewife meter and turning LT's domestic world into a surrealistic dream (or maybe nightmare).There are several subplots which are nicely resolved, as well as a number of tantalizing references to events in McGill's past. Mosley evokes present day New York as spot-on perfectly as he does the Los Angeles of decades past in his Easy Rawlins novels.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Mosley introduces Leonid McGill, another of his superbly-named, reflective characters seeking honor amid the necessary compromises of brutish circumstances. An excellent start to what I hope is many stories of this NYC PI.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is Mosley near the top of his form, creating a new character with such a complete back story that it's hard to remember this is the first time we've met Leonid McGill. McGill is a tough black PI with some heavy baggage: a communist upbringing, a wife he doesn't love, 3 kids who aren't all his blood, a none-too-pure past, and a death on his conscience. The latter has pushed him to a decision to go "straight", setting him and us up for a classic noir journey through the underworld as Leonid struggles to be upright in a profession that rarely makes that easy. Robert B. Parker called this book "quite simply splendid", which is perfectly fitting, since Parker's Spenser had that white hat gig sewed up for such a long time. McGill is more complicated, less predictable than Spenser; Mosley's prose is denser, much less dialog-driven, and he requires more of the reader than Parker did. But anyone who appreciated Spenser's unwavering adherence to his "code" is going to love watching McGill try to "get there". Live long and write, Mr. Mosley.Review written in September, 2014
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Almost seemed like a missing Robert B. Parker book. The main character, an ex-boxer with his on moral creed and and criminal characters he can call on for help, just screamed Spenser. These things didn't distract from the book which was very well written. I had read one other Mosley book in the Easy Rawlins series, but found this book much more enjoyable, maybe because the story was set in current time instead of in the late 40s/early 50s.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Mosley;s characters, no matter how improbable to a middle-class retiree, ring true. His dialogue, no matter how didactic, works. His mix of small detail, no matter how forced, works. This book burns through too quickly. It was not written to ponder, but to sprint. I wish I had a low gear I could force when reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is an amazing first-installment of what I hope will be a long series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Walter Mosely has written a "noir" crime novel that conforms to the conventions of the form. His protagonist is very conscious of being a black man in contemporary America, and very conscious of his history of living and working in the grey area where good and evil shade each other, but he is truly a hero, one who tries throughout to do the right thing and often succeeds.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I had a somewhat difficult time staying with the story. The characters, of which there are many, were not that interesting to me. The writing, at times, is witty and interesting just not enough to overcome the mediocre plot. It is an OK read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed meeting and getting to know Leonid McGill, a formerly-dirty-but-now-trying-his-best-to-stay-straight private investigator. He has a loveless marriage but a son he adores, though he's not his biological father; a tempting former lover; a cop determined to put him behind bars, though they've developed an unlikely friendship; old associates dragging his name through the mud; and a dreaded serial killer who owes him a favor. Despite all this craziness, Leonid is fallible and likable, and walking the thin line between what is legal and what is right.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Leonid McGill is making a major life change - from being crooked to only slightly bent. His gift is that he can find anyone anywhere. He used to find people for anyone who wanted him to. Now, he doesn't want to find people so they can be killed. When a group of childhood friends that he locates start dying, Leonid starts tracking down the person who wanted them found. Then he finds himself on the kill list.His family has no idea what he does for a living. At the book's opening, his wife has just come back to him after moving out for another man. The man's business fails, he has to leave town and she comes home. She took one of their three teenage kids when she left, the only one who is blood related to Leonid. The other two kids don't know they are not biologically his and actually like him better than his biological son.The book is okay. The were a ton of characters and several subplots. The mix of ethnicities seemed a little forced, like Mosley wanted to put as many cultures in the story as possible. Maybe the next one in the series will be fleshed out a little better. I'll probably try another one, but I'm not in a hurry.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An excellent introduction to Leonid McGill's fascinating life. Mosely's style, at least in this series, reminds me a lot of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series (which is also excellent, for those old enough to be familiar with the series).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read the Long Fall with my book club. I must first say that I am a Mosley fan, Easy Rawlins snagged my heart long ago, but it took me some time to finish The Long Fall. I enjoyed the character, Leonid, and all his complexity, but I think I may have began the book hoping to find Easy. Leonid is definitely not Easy, but I grew to like him by the end of the novel. I will have to read the next in the series before I can say with any certainty.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Great pace for a debut of a series. I liked Walter Mosley's new character, Leonid McGill. Mosley fluidly introduced lots of characters that will no doubt populate future books.  And, they weren't "the usual suspects". Nice twist at the end.My compliments to the reader of this audiobook, Mirron Willis. He's perfect in this.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    First leonid McGill mystery--The murder of 3 hoodlums and a businessman as well as the PI who hired LM to find their identities leads LM to search for the reasons. Read while in Kazakhstan.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Character driven PI novel hampered by slow pace and overly introspective passages. The resolution is straight out of Chandler but the character holds promise for future books.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    On MPRs books to read in 2010. Detective stories just aren't my thing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this to be a compelling launch to Mosley's new series. As with the Easy Rawlins books, Mosley brilliant weaves biting social commentary into the conventions and fast pace of noir fiction. Some reviewers have argued that Mosley spends too much time on character development -- filling in the back story on even minor characters. For me this was refreshing. Much of his recent writing outside of the (seemingly) concluded Rawlins series seems rushed with hasty and superficial character development. Here he takes the time to draw his characters fully. And for me, noir fiction is driven by character, not plot (as in who-dunnits). So I'm looking forward to future chapters in the Leonid McGill story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is an amazing first-installment of what I hope will be a long series.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    PlotPrivate investigator Leonid Trotter (L.T.) McGill finds the whereabouts of 4 men for a client. Suddenly the men start to turn up murdered. L.T. must find out who is behind the murders, as the investigator unwittingly gave the murderer the information to find his victims. L.T. is also trying to be a clean P.I., severing his past connections to the NYC underworld. He struggles to accomplish this, as forces try to drag him back into the scene with blackmail and connections from his past. SettingNew York City, some Albany.CharactersL.T. McGill is a conflicted private investigator. The book focuses on his troubled relationships with his wife and children. McGill works nonstop and does not find his home restful.PacingFast paced - MANY characters (confusing number of characters and relationships). Everything is revealed at the end in a climactic resolution, but there are many twists and turns and side stories on the way there.NarrationFirst-person from L.T.'s perspective.=====Language - RSex - mild, adulteryHomosexuality - hints that some individuals may be homosexual, no real focus in the storyViolence - Gun and physical violence, descriptions of sexual abuse
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    all the other reviewers really liked this one. i couldn't understand how it got published. so much detail about his personal life(vomit). his son but i don't remember if it's his biological son is ready to kill someone and all this ties up with a case the hero is working on(maybe). so many characters, insane asylums, rich people, gyms. i couldn't keep it all straight. i listened to it and found the narrator didn't help. at the end i had no idea what it was all about. i usually like mosley
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was like a man, shovel in hand, finding himself standing in a freshly dug grave but with no memory of having dug it. I stayed there because at least if you’ve hit bottom you had no farther to fall. - from The Long Fall -Leonid McGill is a man of contradictions. He has spent much of his life working for criminals as a Private Investigator, immersing himself in the dangerous world of organized crime. But he has a conscience and now wants to live a different life – one where people don’t get killed just because he can locate them. He’s an ex-boxer who appreciates fine art. He’s a no-nonsense, tough guy with a soft spot for his teenage son and a commitment to a marriage that doesn’t work. Sardonic, oddly sensitive, and matter-of-fact, it is Leonid McGill who narrates Walter Mosley’s newest novel The Long Fall.It becomes clear from the early pages of The Long Fall that McGill has his hands full with his marriage, his errant kids, and a new job which ends up being a little different than he expected. I still had a family that looked to me for their sustenance. My wife didn’t love me and the two out of three grown and nearly grown children were not of my blood. But none of that mattered. I had a a job to do, and more than one debt to pay. – from The Long Fall -Mosley writes in a direct way, revealing his protagonist as a man who although willing to do what it takes to get the job done, also struggles with the choices in his life and realizes he must eventually face his demons. I did not love Leonid McGill, but he eventually grew on me. There are few characters in the book who resonated with me – McGill’s children are a mess, his landlady (who wants to be his lover) is superficially drawn, his wife is pathetic, the men who McGill “works” with are cold-blooded killers for the most part, and even his friends are not people with whom I would enjoy an evening. Because of this, I struggled a bit with this novel. I admit, I want to love the characters I spend my time with…and most of Mosley’s characters seem to have been scrapped up from the worst dregs of society.Despite this flaw (for me) in the novel, the plot itself is interesting enough. Written like a hard-boiled type mystery, Mosley lays out a mess of a plot, and then gradually untangles it. The narrative style – conversational, direct, rapid-fire – works for the novel. The book reminds me of those old 1940s movies which start out with a guy, feet up on the desk and a curl of cigarette smoke wafting to the ceiling, talking about one dark and lonely night.The Long Fall is the first in a planned series of mysteries featuring McGill so readers who want more will get their wish. Mystery readers who like their books hard-boiled and who want a flawed character who eventually redeems himself, will enjoy The Long Fall.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I tried very hard to stay objective while I read this book. But really, it was impossible. The author also wrote “The Devil in the Blue Dress,’ which was made into a film starring Denzel Washington. In “The Long Fall,” he creates a character, Leonid McGill, who is an intelligent, charming, ex-boxer with killer instincts but a good heart, and somehow, I was just incapable of not imagining him as Denzel Washington. (If McGill were white, I would have had just as hard of a time not thinking of him as Humphrey Bogart.) Mosley’s prose is compact, like his protagonist, and it even reads a bit like a screenplay.So yes, I really liked this book and I loved the character. But to be honest, I can’t say if it was Leonid or Denzel I was liking so much. Probably both.McGill is a private investigator in his early fifties whose work used to be “dirty,” but now he’s trying to go straight. It’s not easy. His past keeps trying to catch up with him. He goes after the stress aggressively. He boxes at the gym three times a week. He keeps trying and failing to give up smoking. With drinking, he doesn’t even try. He has a Scandinavian wife, and children in a rainbow of colors by a mishmash of fathers, but his love is a father’s love for all of them. The other characters are as multi-dimensional as Leonid. They neither lose your interest nor stretch your belief system.Mosley incorporates the diversity, rage, and complexity of blackness into his created world in tightly coiled sentences that pack a punch. At one point, McGill walks into an obviously white bar named Oddfellows in Albany. He writes: “It wasn’t 2008 everywhere in America. Some people lived in the sixties, and others might as well have been veterans of the Civil War. In many establishments I was considered a Black Man; other folks, in more genteel joints, used the term “African-American,” but at Oddfellows I was a nigger where there were no niggers allowed.” His prose is admirable for expressing so much so economically. Take this paragraph: “The best time to kill someone is when they’re going through a door. While passing from one place to another most people are a little off guard, distracted by the subtle displacement separating here from there.”Mosley’s book is well worth reading, even if you don’t picture Denzel while you read. But especially if you do!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Walter Mosley’s The Long Fall is a mystery novel set in New York. The main character and narrator, Leonid, is perfection. A private investigator trying to balance what he believes is right and what is necessary to pay his rent and provide for his family. When he ignores his gut and takes the wrong case; inadvertently assisting in murder, he finds himself fighting for his life. Which is only the beginning of his problems, as his youngest son is also plotting a murder. There is a lot of back story and compelling family drama intermixed with the front burner story line—the book is obviously a series launch. The plot is very intricate (sometimes predictable), but the structure and pace become consuming. I had some difficulty understanding how Leonid came up with some of his conclusions, but it could be that I was racing through the pages. When I wasn’t reading this book, I wanted to be reading this book. The Long Fall is as near a perfect mystery as I have read lately. I am looking forward to the next installment of the series.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Long Fall is the first book in Walter Mosley’s new noir-ish series featuring the fiftysomething New York City private investigator, Leonid Trotter McGill (“LT”).Like other Mosley protagonists, LT is a smart, reflective observer, complex in his ethics and relationships in ways that intrigue readers and make them care deeply. He’s a boxer with a Buddhist philosophy -- “Throwing a punch is the yang of a boxer’s life. The yin is being able to avoid getting hit” -- and admits to having thrown enough yang that he’s now changed his life “from crooked to only slightly bent.”The novel opens as LT seemingly nears completion of his current case -- locating four men who knew each other as boys -- but when accumulating troubles start to test his yin, the story takes off. Unfortunately, it took off without me, as I became lost in unfamiliar minor characters and could only half-follow the storyline. I finally stopped to re-read the first five chapters and discovered why: nearly 40 characters are introduced in those 30 pages, but few are adequately unpacked.Still, I read Mosley for his settings and main characters, and the ones here have terrific series potential -- people and places that are unlike me in the ways that intrigue … and deeply familiar in the ways that matter. (Review based on an advance-reading copy.)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Private detective Leonid McGill is trying to go straight, leaving his less than legal life behind. But honesty becomes challenging as he is hired by Albany private detective Ambrose Thurman to find four young men. The only information that Ambrose provides him with is the street names the young men used when they were teenagers. Leonid finds the men in question but there is something fishy about the whole situation and he is uncomfortable with certain aspects of the case. But the rent on his office is due and he needs the money so he shelves his doubts and hands over the names and addresses of the men to Ambrose. But all of Leonid's fears are confirmed when he finds out that the young men are suddenly turning up dead. In addition to all of this, Twill, Leonid's son is involved in something non too legal, his estranged wife has recently returned to his life and the woman who he truly cares for, is unavailable to him. Worst of all, as the men die, the police begin to look at him as a suspect. There is much to like about the story. I was drawn in almost from the beginning and intrigued by Leonid's life and dealings. The author has created a character who you know has a very checkered past but you almost can't help rooting for. But one of the first things that really bothered me about the book was the author's constant references to race. Characters were almost always described on a racial basis and interactions had many racial undertones. In a very small way I understand what the author was driving at when he first made certain racial references but after awhile it was extreme overkill. Also the resolution of the story was just not good enough. You spend all this time getting invested but when you find out what really happened you feel cheated. The author tried very hard to give the reader a feel for who Leonid was and brought in other story lines that were not related to the main mystery. Unfortunately, the detours became distractions and as interesting as they may have been, they became hindrance rather than help. But despite these problems I am not averse to reading more in this series(this is the first Leonid McGill mystery). I will definitely look out for the next book as I want to see what Leonid gets into the next time around.