Walter Mosley Books

As a huge Walter Mosley fan, I was blown away by his creativity. This book is totally different from the others...very erotic, exciting, & breathtaking. I recommed it wholeheartedly. I

Having been a fan of Mosley's noir stuff, this was a no brainer to buy. I had no idea how much I would love and connect with the main character so much. Being A.A. man who has gone thru a similar events, it pained me at times, had me howling with laughter at others. This book belongs in the hands of open minded people only. Dig it!

I loved it! I was capitivated by "L" I had to know how his story would end. Mr. Mosley did an awesome job exploring this man's torment. I read some of the previous reviews and I am shocked, what did people expect from a "Sexistential novel"?? Although I will admit, this book can take the reader outside their comfort zone of sexual exploration, but if you read Erotic Noir or watch Showtime or HBO...how could you be shocked?. I loved this book because, Mr. Mosley wrote a story that captures the "inside head fantasies" ( Murder, Revenge,quitting your job, multiple lovers,being "FREE"). This is about tormented people more so than it is about the sex. Its a story about the things one does to find peace of mind. Beautifully written journey!!!!!

Wow! Was all I could say. I am definitely not use to reading things like this from Walter Mosley, but loved it! This is nothing more than 'poetic-porn'. But the book kept me reading. So for those that like erotic stories this is the one for you!

This book is not for everyone. Walter Mosely seems to write books that fall in to various categories, and this one is certainly not from the category that would appeal to a mass audience like his Easy Rawlins novels. Some readers may have detected the percolations of the darker side of Mosely within the Rawlins books, however, and readers intrigued by those glimpses may want to read this work.

I read the book in two sittings, utterly glued to the page. It was shocking, disgusting, disturbing, and gut wrenching. The book describes in minute detail experiences that most people barely allow themselves to conceptualize in words. The character engages not only in fairly extreme sexual acts, he also describes these acts in stomach churning detail. Many readers may be disturbed by the insights into the dark recesses of the male sexual brain.

The main complaint I have seen voiced by critics of the book is that it is a male fantasy, or that it is unrealistic, or that it endorses a hedonistic lifestyle or philosophy. I think these criticisms are correct, from a certain point of view, and there is no doubt this is a flawed work, but those criticisms do not take away from the raw power of much of the novel.

The novel is written in the first person, and for some readers, it may be hard to keep one's perspective. It is easy to be drawn in to the character's experiences through the vivid narration and detail. However, I don't believe that we are meant to identify with him as we would a conventional hero. I don't believe the author endorsed the character's actions, or intended him as a model for the behavior of others, but that he used the character to expose rarely charted realms of difficult experiences that many people have but few choose to question or explore.

The criticism of the unreality of the book is a serious one. The plot features several chance circumstances, twists, and, frankly, ridiculous feats of sexual stamina and bodily fluid production on the part of the main character. The book is unrealistic in its cramming of events that rely on pure chance into a week's time. I believe the author did this in order to make the emotional pressure that the character is undergoing seem even more extreme, and to provide a speed to the narrative and a way to excuse some of the ill-considered and impulsive behavior that the character engages in. I found that despite the unreality of the situation, the book was still very gripping, because the depiction of the mentality and emotions of the character were so vivid and believable. In short, I found the character to be believable, even if the situations he was put in strained credulity.

Ultimately, the book batters the reader with a series of practically insane sexual and emotional experiences. I found that process of being subjected to these to be a challenging one on an emotional and intellectual level. I don't believe every reader will be interested in a book like this. However, I thought it was a powerful book and a fairly unique one.

As a huge Walter Mosley fan, I was blown away by his creativity. This book is totally different from the others...very erotic, exciting, & breathtaking. I recommed it wholeheartedly. I

Having been a fan of Mosley's noir stuff, this was a no brainer to buy. I had no idea how much I would love and connect with the main character so much. Being A.A. man who has gone thru a similar events, it pained me at times, had me howling with laughter at others. This book belongs in the hands of open minded people only. Dig it!

I loved it! I was capitivated by "L" I had to know how his story would end. Mr. Mosley did an awesome job exploring this man's torment. I read some of the previous reviews and I am shocked, what did people expect from a "Sexistential novel"?? Although I will admit, this book can take the reader outside their comfort zone of sexual exploration, but if you read Erotic Noir or watch Showtime or HBO...how could you be shocked?. I loved this book because, Mr. Mosley wrote a story that captures the "inside head fantasies" ( Murder, Revenge,quitting your job, multiple lovers,being "FREE"). This is about tormented people more so than it is about the sex. Its a story about the things one does to find peace of mind. Beautifully written journey!!!!!

Wow! Was all I could say. I am definitely not use to reading things like this from Walter Mosley, but loved it! This is nothing more than 'poetic-porn'. But the book kept me reading. So for those that like erotic stories this is the one for you!

This book is not for everyone. Walter Mosely seems to write books that fall in to various categories, and this one is certainly not from the category that would appeal to a mass audience like his Easy Rawlins novels. Some readers may have detected the percolations of the darker side of Mosely within the Rawlins books, however, and readers intrigued by those glimpses may want to read this work.

I read the book in two sittings, utterly glued to the page. It was shocking, disgusting, disturbing, and gut wrenching. The book describes in minute detail experiences that most people barely allow themselves to conceptualize in words. The character engages not only in fairly extreme sexual acts, he also describes these acts in stomach churning detail. Many readers may be disturbed by the insights into the dark recesses of the male sexual brain.

The main complaint I have seen voiced by critics of the book is that it is a male fantasy, or that it is unrealistic, or that it endorses a hedonistic lifestyle or philosophy. I think these criticisms are correct, from a certain point of view, and there is no doubt this is a flawed work, but those criticisms do not take away from the raw power of much of the novel.

The novel is written in the first person, and for some readers, it may be hard to keep one's perspective. It is easy to be drawn in to the character's experiences through the vivid narration and detail. However, I don't believe that we are meant to identify with him as we would a conventional hero. I don't believe the author endorsed the character's actions, or intended him as a model for the behavior of others, but that he used the character to expose rarely charted realms of difficult experiences that many people have but few choose to question or explore.

The criticism of the unreality of the book is a serious one. The plot features several chance circumstances, twists, and, frankly, ridiculous feats of sexual stamina and bodily fluid production on the part of the main character. The book is unrealistic in its cramming of events that rely on pure chance into a week's time. I believe the author did this in order to make the emotional pressure that the character is undergoing seem even more extreme, and to provide a speed to the narrative and a way to excuse some of the ill-considered and impulsive behavior that the character engages in. I found that despite the unreality of the situation, the book was still very gripping, because the depiction of the mentality and emotions of the character were so vivid and believable. In short, I found the character to be believable, even if the situations he was put in strained credulity.

Ultimately, the book batters the reader with a series of practically insane sexual and emotional experiences. I found that process of being subjected to these to be a challenging one on an emotional and intellectual level. I don't believe every reader will be interested in a book like this. However, I thought it was a powerful book and a fairly unique one.

What has happened to literature? These stories are poorly written in my opinion. If these are the best, I'd hate to see the worst American short stories. Take "Moriya", a piece of trash written by Dean Paschal included in this collection for example. Hey Dean: just because no one has written a story about an adolescent "mecahnical minded" boy fantasizing, masturbating, and having sex with a doll doesn't make your story great literature. I've given up one American writing for the present...

Having never read one of the "Best American Short Stories" collections, I have no way to judge this latest edition to past efforts. The only thing I can speak to is how I felt about the stories contained in this collection and how good I think they are. There are some very fine stories in this collection with one in particular that I just loved.

Louise Erdrich has long been my favorite novelist, but I was still nervous about what she would make from the short story format. "Shamengwa" is a moving story which revolves around a violin and the effect it has had, in various ways, on the lives of several members of a community. Anthony Doerr has one of the better stories in the collection, "The Shell Collector". With such a deceptively simple title, one would not expect such raw power and an interesting story about a man who lives alone but has gained worldwide attention because of the poison in one particular kind of shell. Another standout is Ryan Harty's "Why the Sky Turns Red when the Sun Goes Down", a story of a family with a robotic son (literally, the boy is a robot, or, perhaps an android). This is a touching story.

The best story in the collection, and then one that blew me away is Dan Chaon's "The Bees". This one was completely unexpected and shocking. While this one would probably fall into the category of "horror", don't let that mislead you. This one starts out easy, just identifying a man and his family and we start to learn about his past. He wasn't a good man during his first marriage and he deeply regrets it. But as the story continues and we get snippets of revelation, the tension grows and so does this air of creepiness that I got while I was reading it. The tension does not let up until the end of the story, but rather it keeps building because we don't quite know what is going on and this is not what you would assume a typical "horror" story would be. It is a psychological horror and it is just gripping.

This is a very fine collection, but "The Bees" was the one story that truly stood out for me and it continues to be memorable.

-Joe Sherry

Sigh. Not that most of these stories are actually bad but they do suffer from what an earlier reviewer called a "constricted cautiousness". Besides, maybe I've read too many of these types of pieces already but wow - are some of the themes here familiar. For example, being working-class in America (or a working class immigrant) really pounds rocks. And hey - there sure is a lot of quiet desperation in them there suburbs. Yawn yawn yawn.

This delicious short stories collection has taken me a long time to read. Not because the stories were boring or bad but since every story was so condensed, rich and powerful I could not easily part from a certain state of mind and place and move on the next story.
I try to think what are the similar features of these 2003 stories and what can they say about our time...these are very different subjects, characters and places but maybe I could say that the stories discuss a self growth of some sort. Be it a teenager boy having his first sexual encounter with a demonically bewitching mechanically doll or a person reflecting how his life has developed from a certain event as a Chinese delivery boy in the streets of New York -- but off course I guess this is a too easy generalization that can be said of any story whatsoever.
"Why the sky turns red when the sun goes down" by Ryan Harty is a good example of the stories ability to emotionally stir you up and touch an issue very relevant for parents everywhere, maybe this is what made this story so special for me. The story starts out as a very ordinary family crisis tale. The father learns that something happened to his boy and goes out to fetch him. The turning point comes when the boy is seen lying down with his hand thrown a few yards away from his body. Slowly you realize that this is a mechanical child and prepare yourself for some science fiction descriptions, which do not arrive. Apart from the very central "mechanical boy" fact this is a very real story in all its levels, with nothing "modern" or alienated about it. By the end of the story I remained with the strong feeling that mechanical or not, the parents are facing the same questions parents everywhere are asking themselves and mainly "are we doing the right thing". How do we keep our children and families safe? What are the lies we tell our children and ourselves in order to keep us safe? "Why the sky turns red..." has the heavy atmosphere that is very characteristic of many of the other stories in this collection. Something hard and heavy is hanging above and the characters are having a hard time trying to push it away, like a certain pain that has become a part of your life. The story "The Bees" suffers (or rather enjoys?) the same heavy atmosphere, only here this is not something between husband and wife but between a man and himself. The man is in turmoil because of something in the past that clouds his present. When the punishment arrives, you accept it as the anticipation and tension has been built up all along.
I did not read the previous Best American Short stories but feel as if Walter Mosely has done an incredible job. Or maybe these fine authors have made his job easier. This is a masterpiece collection of stories.
"Ghost Knife", "Moriya", " Baby Wilson", "Devotion" and "Future Emergencies" are some of my favorite stories in this collection. Off course I can relate easily to stories which discuss women, parents or people who are in a position similar to mine, but the greatness of these stories is that you can feel the pain, helplessness and anger of people in totally different surroundings and situations, such as immigrants recalling something in their past or people from another culture all together (the stories "Night Talkers" or "Marie-Ange's Ginen" which are set in Haiti for example).
This is truly good literature and my only regret is that I cannot discuss these stories in a literature class so I can understand all the further layers.
Do not miss the last few pages of the book where every writer gives a few lines about his story and how it came through.

I so look forward to these annual volumes of BEST short stories. These collections normally have such a variety of subject and style. Not this volume. The subject of nearly every story was the alienation of immigrants in America. For the first time ever, I didn't finish reading the collection. I mean, I love popcorn, but want variety!

88 WAYS TO DIE by Johnnie Mitchell: Interesting PI tale self-published by the author earlier this year. Black PI Ellis Mason is a small businessman in Chicago in 1988 who gets caught up in a murder case when the girlfriend of his client is killed. As he is pulled deeper and deeper into the matter he hooks up with Brad Royce, a big time agency owner who numbers among his clients a congressional candidate looking for dirt on a rival. It is Chicago, after all, so, its not surprising that Mason and Royce are soon swimming upstream in a river of murder, greed, and political corruption. As with many self- published efforts, this book could have benefited from some tighter editing, more street time and less "bed time." I hope Mr. Mitchell does well enough to produce some more, as Mason could potentially be Chicago's answer to LA's Eazy Rawlins.

--Jack Quick Bookbitch.com

Set in Chicago during the presidential election of 1988, Johnnie Mitchell's debut
mystery, 88 WAYS TO DIE, introduces African-American private detective, Ellis
Mason. Ellis is hired by ex-con Armad Drew for a simple case--following Armad's
girfriend, Donna Beck, who he suspects is cheating on him. But the case quickly
becomes complicated when Donna is murdered and Armad is arrested for the crime.
When Armad begs Ellis to help him, Ellis reluctantly agrees not knowing what he's
getting himself into. Ellis discovers that Donna's murder is only the tip of the iceberg
and after one of his own employees is murdered, soon find himself teamed up with
Brad Royce, another PI who happens to be working for a congressional candidate. Both
men find themselves attracted to Francine Darden, a beautiful co-worker of Donna
Beck's who has secrets of her own and is the link between both men's cases. Ellis and
Brad find themselves up to their necks in murder, blackmail, corruption, and politics
and must find their way out before they're the next victim's.

Johnnie Mitchell tells a good story and introduces a strong character in Ellis Mason.
The book would have been greatly enhanced by editing as the typos proved to be a bit
of a distraction. At 162 pages, I would have liked for the book to have been a little
longer. Otherwise, I look forward to reading more of Ellis Mason's adventures and will
be curious to see if he teams up with Brad Royce next time around.

An ex-con, two detectives-different agencies, two women working for
a brokerage firm, an international finance mogul, a local politician
and a campaign manager; were somehow connected. A determination of
how, will give the solution to the mystery 88 WAYS TO DIE.

The ex-con hires detective Ellis Mason to keep tabs on his girlfriend.
The Congressional candidate hires detective Brad Royce to find dirt on
a political rival; which involves tailing the rival's girlfriend. The

detective's paths cross when the women they are following are both
murdered. The ex-con is arrested for killing his girlfriend and the
other woman's death is charged to a drive by shooting. But the police
believe because the women knew each other, the killings are related.
Now that addresses the ex-con, the detectives, and the women at the
brokerage. But that is only the tip of the iceberg, what roles do
the campaign manager and the international mogul play in this puzzle?

That is what the dectectives have to find out.

88 Ways To Die is an intriguing story set in Chicago during the
Presidential Election of 1988. Where everyone seemed to be caught in
a web of murder, dirty politics, shady deals and high profile women.
The intrigue however was over shadowed for me because there were too
many names to remember, too many secondary characters and not a clear
picture of who the primary characters were. I would love to have been
able to focus my attention on 'whodunit', instead my focus was on who
the players were. I do suggest you pick up a copy and figure this one
out for yourself.

Reviewed by aNN Brown

The first time I had the opportunity to read the first issue of the Fantastic Four was in the Pocket Books collection published in the late 1970s. Despite being shrunk to the size of paperback page, the comic still brimmed with excitement and energy and I still think fondly of that book. Reading the Maximum Fantastic Four was a very different experience. Reading is probably the wrong verb though because I didn't find Maximum Fantastic Four to be conducive to actually reading. Instead, the audience is expected to absorb the combination of image and text as if it were a static painting or advertising image.

As Walter Mosely indicates, the experience allows to you concentrate on the design - layout, color, penciling, and to a certain extent pacing - of the book. Some of the panels certainly gain added gravitas when they are separated from the story and allowed to stand on their own. Panels are given their own page or double page spreads.

Unfortunately, I found the overall experience disappointing. Some panels are cropped in such a way that text is cut from the image. I found it annoying to have pieces of the picture tantalizingly out of reach, even it was text. In addition, some panels are placed in such a way that the gutter runs through their middle. There is little gutter loss but the book didn't lie flat if you were near the beginning or end. A slight bump lifted one side and would disrupt the image. The problem would not have occurred if these panels were centered on a separate page and it is not clear why they weren't given separate pages to begin with.

Walter Mosely discusses how this project began when he enlarged panels scanned from his own copy of Fantastic Four. I certainly shared his enjoyment in select instances. I thought Reed and Johnny's fall in the Mole Man's depths was fantastic (no pun intended) as were the first appearance of the Mole Man, the Diamond Valley and the comedy of Sue Storm trying to pay the taxi driver. That said, there were a few times where the change in size affected the quality of the linework. Maybe I'm sensitive but, in my humble opinion, the linework looked crisper and more powerful when it didn't fill the whole page. My eye seemed to prefer a lower ratio and so I felt some images didn't benefit when they maximized enlargement.

The essays by Mosely and Evanier were good. Evanier's examination of the mystery of who worked on Fantastic Four #1, including the unknown inker and whether Lee gave Kirby a typed script, seemed thoroughly researched. I've seen much of this speculation and detective work in piecemeal articles from other magazines, notably Roy Thomas' ALTER EGO. Mosely's thoughts on Maximum Fantastic Four were fine, but, again, I don't find myself as enraptured with the maximization of Kirby's art as did Mosely. His thoughts do provide a valuable prism via which you should approach the book.

Much care and thought was put into producing this book and so I give credit to everyone who worked on it. I think this project overreaches its abilities though. I won't go so far as to denigrate it because it does accomplish its goals on occasion. Unfortunately, it doesn't satisfy me completely for the reasons stated. This book could be a revelatory experience for some readers and I wish those readers well.

"Maximum Fantastic Four" is an interesting idea concocted by the famed author Walter Mosley (yes, the guy who writes the Easy Rawlins books).

It's a large format reprint volume of FF #1, with only a panel (at most two) a page. Sometimes the panel spreads across two pages, and in a few instances, a huge gatefold is necessary.

The reproductions are pristine, and the colors feel just right.

In doing so, Mr. Mosley has discovered what made comics magical when you were little. No matter how much you love comics now...it's not the same as when you were little. Didn't they seem BIGGER back then? Not in size, but in scope. Comics were definitely widescreen in a pan-and-scan world.
He noticed that in re-reading his beloved early FF issues, they didn't have the same majesty to them, the same bigness. So he scanned the first issue into his computer, which enabled him to ponder each frame at a time. It slowed him down. And the magic came back.
He is so right. I don't know about you, but now I read too fast, and I sort of read a page at a time. But I didn't use to.
In reprinting the book in this fashion, he forces us to read like a child again. Every panel was a scene in a movie. They were nearly three-dimensional. Panoramic.

Widescreen.

After reading through the book, as well as reading the essays and stuff from Mosley and Mark Evanier, it became so perfectly obvious, so painfully clear. He identified the precise difference between reading comics when you're young, and reading comics when you're old.

And you will spiral dizzyingly back to your childhood reading this book this way...I had a terrific time.

I think this book will work best for those who came of "comic age" during the Silver Age...60's to 70's. I think older, Golden Age fans won't get the same rush, and the relatively sophisticated children of the 80s...of the Dark Knight and Watchmen era ...may not have had experienced that simple wide-eyed wonder that we did.

The one reason I don't give this five stars is that with all the fancy-shmancy "design elements" put into this book, whenever a panel crosses the midline, you lose a big part of it as it dives in towards the binding. Also, some panels actually have parts missing, including some words/lines.

Nevertheless, that's trivial compared to the gasp you'll release when you open the final gatefold...

...MAN that was cool!

This was only the second book I have read by Mosley. It has a well thought out story idea and some of the best Science Fiction I have ever read. Mosley's style is unique. He is an artist in this profession as demonstrated by the range of his work. I have read many (hundreds) of science fiction novels. This is some of the best I have ever read and takes Science Fiction in a new direction.

A strange alien presence manifests itself on Earth as a blue light, and infects a small number of people. One of them, just as he was dying. He become the Gray Man, and has a thing for going around and killing these 'Blues' rather violently.

The Blues become something more than human, and go off to live by themselves in a sort of cult, as well as some others they have partly infected.

It is all kind of pointless, and the end makes you just about want to yell about how bad it is.

Avoid.

Alice in Wonderland meets Stephen King. When a mysterious blue light enters the souls of a variety of people, good and bad, they receive powers and knowledge beyond this world--whatever gifts they have are made even stronger. But then...strange things start to happen.

The colorful characters, deep symbolism and surreal scenarios make this book a unique thriller with a conclusion that leaves you wondering where fantasy began and reality ended.

Some of the details were a little gory for me and generally overall it was disappointing--maybe because of his venture into Sci-Fi. The info on the back cover enticed me to read it, but alas, I really fought hard to get through this book and decide what I felt about it.

Overall his characters were thinly developed and the story ended abruptly--and I felt, with a bit more effort, could have improved the total results. Maybe I had different expectations because of who the author is--and his reputation with the mystery genre and his Easy Rawlins stories.

Armchair Interviews says: This writer changed genre, and seemed to miss the mark for many SciFi fans.

Walter Mosley, like too many mainstream and mystery writers, appears to believe that "science fiction" means "logic and plausibility get tossed out the window." That the official Amazon.com review compares this book to the work of Philip K. Dick is amazing and wrong-headed; Dick knew how to ground his surrealism in the real world and especially in real human beings. Whatever Mr. Mosley does in his mysteries and mainstream fiction, that's not what he's doing here.

I started reading Mosley years (and years) ago, and wondered for a second when I saw Blue Light on the shelves if it was really by the same author. There is a great science fiction/fantasy story in here (if you hate sf viscerally, maybe you shouldn't read it: if you have an open mind and can risk it, you should) and what seemed to me a delightful wistful remembrance of times past in a hippy-freak california you'd have trouble finding these days... I get one of my favourite emotions from this novel: nostalgia for the future (the future the blue light heralds). Where did it go?

I hope another story in this sequence appears almost as much as I'd like another Socrates Fortlow book.

Walter Mosley never fails to take you on a journey in his novels and Diablerie is no different. It's a short ride, but engaging nonetheless. Mosley can be counted on for leaving you with food for thought.

I think Mosley is a great writer but this was a total piece of trash. I can't think of any redeaming qualities. It was nothing but graphic sex without love and violence. A waste of time and Mosley's talent.

Mosley's Diablerie: A Novel, although disappointing, is, fortunately, short and easy to read.

As Mosley fans know, we love his "do it my way" attitude reflected in his characters and the life he creates for them. His fans, however, will find that he pushes us a bit far in this book. Dibbuk, the main character, not only alienates his wife, lover, and daughter but isn't given enough substance to deserve the heroic efforts by the minor character, Cassius. Debbuk says, "One of the things about our relationship was that we never talked about our lives at all. Everything was light, impersonal, noncontroversial." Why would Cassius help him? Strange shallow relationships like this exist with every character in the book.

This may express, as other reviewers have written, alienation in our modern life, but it doesn't work here. Mosley, in other books, allows us to travel alongside his characters to endings that often are anticlimactic, but we realize that a well-constructed journey to this end is his main point. We find that satisfying.

Diablerie ends similarly but, unfortunately, leaves us without substantial characters or a meaningful plot: rather a large disappointment

Good however the writing is typical Mosley which means that the writing is good. If you give his book a chance and don't rely on your own precepition and/or value system you will walk away with something learned and new insight on the human condition. I found the supporting characters in this novel just as and sometimes more interesting then the main characters. Yes typical Mosley-that means good!

The great mystery novelist Lawrence Block once told me that he could write a cookbook at that point in his career and it would be shelved with the mysteries in bookstores. Such is the peril of being stereotyped as an author.

Walter Mosley could have faced a similar fate. As the author of the bestselling Easy Rawlins series, he is a "name" mystery writer. But he has worked hard and prolifically over the years to branch out into other genres, such as literary novels, science fiction and nonfiction. Last year he wrote KILLING JOHNNY FRY, which was sexually frank or, in Mosley's words, a "sexistential noir."

Now Mosley has penned DIABLERIE, which echoes some of the themes of Johnny Fry to once again paint a devastating portrait of an ordinary man in extraordinary crisis. DIABLERIE cements Mosley's reputation as one of our best writers of modern noir.

On the surface, Ben Dibbuk is an American success story. He is a 47-year-old computer troubleshooter for a huge New York City bank. Married for 23 years to an upwardly mobile wife, they raised a daughter now in college. And he created this comfortable life by overcoming his own personal demons. Once a blackout drinker and rambler in the years before his marriage, he has been clean and sober for over two decades.

But if there is one rule of noir, it is this: nothing is what it appears to be on the surface. Beneath the surface, Ben is emotionally dead. He describes his feelings when his daughter smiles at him: "While she beamed at me, the feeling that lurked in my shoulder blades took over. Not an emotion or something physical like pain or heat or cold, it was more akin to a void, a sensual numbness."

Ben's relationship with his wife, Mona, is in a freefall. He says, "We just wrangled, disputed over anything: Seela's future, our sex routines, what life had or had not brought to either or us." So Ben now pays the rent and bills of a much younger, Russian college "student" (perhaps mistress, perhaps hooker). Svetlana is on call 24/7 to have sex with Ben.

But even wild sex with a woman half his age doesn't work for Ben anymore. "`I don't hate anybody.' I said, thinking, nor do I love or fear or worry about anyone." Ben's entire existence is about keeping control. "The idea of me, Ben Dibbuk, losing control, even for a moment, was ridiculous."

Then his life of quiet desperation is thrown into chaos when a lady apparently from his past walks up to him at a business dinner he is forced to attend by his wife, a magazine editor. The mystery woman seems to know him, but Ben has no recollection of her. What's worse is when she appears again a few days later at his office, demanding to know why he wants to "hurt" her.

His drinking days are a "shadow," which "contained a mountain." Ben then finds that his wife not only has taken a lover, but is having him investigated by a detective. Why? What crime might he have committed with this mystery woman? Ben says, "I was beginning to feel fear...What was happening to me? Why was my past, a past that held nothing but a few drunken benders, coming back?"

Soon, cops from Colorado ask Ben to come in for questioning about a murder that happened 20 years before, of which he has no knowledge. Like the Edmond O'Brien character in the great film noir DOA, Ben has entered the perpetual noir night. He thinks, "Darkness was up ahead, I knew. Death and demolition were my destination, if not my destiny --- that is what I felt. But I didn't care. The void in my shoulders protected me from the fear." He won't be going into work at the bank anytime soon. And he starts smoking again. For the first time, Ben is forced to face the truth, not only about his drinking days, but about his parents and his brother in prison, and the possibility of true love and redemption in life.

Mosley has once again written a great book that will keep you turning pages right until the end. Faulkner once said that "the problem with the past is that it is never past." And that is certainly the theme here. But Mosley's brilliance is that he writes about a world in which comfort and security is an illusion. Any day can bring a wrong turn on the road at the exact wrong moment, a voice from the buried past on the phone or the spot on the CAT scan that might throw us into the noir night.

Mosley writes, "Life for all Americans, whether they knew it or not, was like playing blackjack against the house --- sooner or later you were going to lose...The winners were my bosses' bosses' bosses. They lived in the Alps or Palm Springs or somewhere else where the earth is run from...Black people in prison, Iraqis blown up on job lines in Baghdad or Vietnamese peasants in their rice paddies becoming target practice for passing American helicopters --- we were all dealt a losing hand."

And that is why DIABLERIE is even scarier than the mysteries for which Mosley is famous. Here, he has written a novel about real people with real weaknesses and vulnerabilities who miscalculate when everything is on the line. Ben Dibbuk could be any one of us on a really, really bad day.

--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan

Walter Mosley never fails to take you on a journey in his novels and Diablerie is no different. It's a short ride, but engaging nonetheless. Mosley can be counted on for leaving you with food for thought.

I think Mosley is a great writer but this was a total piece of trash. I can't think of any redeaming qualities. It was nothing but graphic sex without love and violence. A waste of time and Mosley's talent.

Mosley's Diablerie: A Novel, although disappointing, is, fortunately, short and easy to read.

As Mosley fans know, we love his "do it my way" attitude reflected in his characters and the life he creates for them. His fans, however, will find that he pushes us a bit far in this book. Dibbuk, the main character, not only alienates his wife, lover, and daughter but isn't given enough substance to deserve the heroic efforts by the minor character, Cassius. Debbuk says, "One of the things about our relationship was that we never talked about our lives at all. Everything was light, impersonal, noncontroversial." Why would Cassius help him? Strange shallow relationships like this exist with every character in the book.

This may express, as other reviewers have written, alienation in our modern life, but it doesn't work here. Mosley, in other books, allows us to travel alongside his characters to endings that often are anticlimactic, but we realize that a well-constructed journey to this end is his main point. We find that satisfying.

Diablerie ends similarly but, unfortunately, leaves us without substantial characters or a meaningful plot: rather a large disappointment

Good however the writing is typical Mosley which means that the writing is good. If you give his book a chance and don't rely on your own precepition and/or value system you will walk away with something learned and new insight on the human condition. I found the supporting characters in this novel just as and sometimes more interesting then the main characters. Yes typical Mosley-that means good!

The great mystery novelist Lawrence Block once told me that he could write a cookbook at that point in his career and it would be shelved with the mysteries in bookstores. Such is the peril of being stereotyped as an author.

Walter Mosley could have faced a similar fate. As the author of the bestselling Easy Rawlins series, he is a "name" mystery writer. But he has worked hard and prolifically over the years to branch out into other genres, such as literary novels, science fiction and nonfiction. Last year he wrote KILLING JOHNNY FRY, which was sexually frank or, in Mosley's words, a "sexistential noir."

Now Mosley has penned DIABLERIE, which echoes some of the themes of Johnny Fry to once again paint a devastating portrait of an ordinary man in extraordinary crisis. DIABLERIE cements Mosley's reputation as one of our best writers of modern noir.

On the surface, Ben Dibbuk is an American success story. He is a 47-year-old computer troubleshooter for a huge New York City bank. Married for 23 years to an upwardly mobile wife, they raised a daughter now in college. And he created this comfortable life by overcoming his own personal demons. Once a blackout drinker and rambler in the years before his marriage, he has been clean and sober for over two decades.

But if there is one rule of noir, it is this: nothing is what it appears to be on the surface. Beneath the surface, Ben is emotionally dead. He describes his feelings when his daughter smiles at him: "While she beamed at me, the feeling that lurked in my shoulder blades took over. Not an emotion or something physical like pain or heat or cold, it was more akin to a void, a sensual numbness."

Ben's relationship with his wife, Mona, is in a freefall. He says, "We just wrangled, disputed over anything: Seela's future, our sex routines, what life had or had not brought to either or us." So Ben now pays the rent and bills of a much younger, Russian college "student" (perhaps mistress, perhaps hooker). Svetlana is on call 24/7 to have sex with Ben.

But even wild sex with a woman half his age doesn't work for Ben anymore. "`I don't hate anybody.' I said, thinking, nor do I love or fear or worry about anyone." Ben's entire existence is about keeping control. "The idea of me, Ben Dibbuk, losing control, even for a moment, was ridiculous."

Then his life of quiet desperation is thrown into chaos when a lady apparently from his past walks up to him at a business dinner he is forced to attend by his wife, a magazine editor. The mystery woman seems to know him, but Ben has no recollection of her. What's worse is when she appears again a few days later at his office, demanding to know why he wants to "hurt" her.

His drinking days are a "shadow," which "contained a mountain." Ben then finds that his wife not only has taken a lover, but is having him investigated by a detective. Why? What crime might he have committed with this mystery woman? Ben says, "I was beginning to feel fear...What was happening to me? Why was my past, a past that held nothing but a few drunken benders, coming back?"

Soon, cops from Colorado ask Ben to come in for questioning about a murder that happened 20 years before, of which he has no knowledge. Like the Edmond O'Brien character in the great film noir DOA, Ben has entered the perpetual noir night. He thinks, "Darkness was up ahead, I knew. Death and demolition were my destination, if not my destiny --- that is what I felt. But I didn't care. The void in my shoulders protected me from the fear." He won't be going into work at the bank anytime soon. And he starts smoking again. For the first time, Ben is forced to face the truth, not only about his drinking days, but about his parents and his brother in prison, and the possibility of true love and redemption in life.

Mosley has once again written a great book that will keep you turning pages right until the end. Faulkner once said that "the problem with the past is that it is never past." And that is certainly the theme here. But Mosley's brilliance is that he writes about a world in which comfort and security is an illusion. Any day can bring a wrong turn on the road at the exact wrong moment, a voice from the buried past on the phone or the spot on the CAT scan that might throw us into the noir night.

Mosley writes, "Life for all Americans, whether they knew it or not, was like playing blackjack against the house --- sooner or later you were going to lose...The winners were my bosses' bosses' bosses. They lived in the Alps or Palm Springs or somewhere else where the earth is run from...Black people in prison, Iraqis blown up on job lines in Baghdad or Vietnamese peasants in their rice paddies becoming target practice for passing American helicopters --- we were all dealt a losing hand."

And that is why DIABLERIE is even scarier than the mysteries for which Mosley is famous. Here, he has written a novel about real people with real weaknesses and vulnerabilities who miscalculate when everything is on the line. Ben Dibbuk could be any one of us on a really, really bad day.

--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan

I mistakenly order the spanish version. Came in time, in good shape. Can't use it.