Joe King Oliver (AKA King) has spent time in Rikers Island Prison, after three months he is released. He didn’t commit the crime he was accused of, it was a set up. Ten years later he is running a P.I business and when the chance to look into his own case along he cannot resist, he wants to know who was behind his incarceration.

I will admit to being a little bit conflicted with this book and finding that writing my thoughts a little bit of a challenge. On the one hand there are several things I liked about the story, such as King, a damaged, emotionally (and physically) scarred personality, I liked his back story and his progression through the psychological scars that he still carries with him. Now the confusing (for me) bits. The cast is huge, there are so many players, secondary characters and just pop in and gone characters that I found I was loosing track of who was who. Also there are two cases being investigated within this book, that of King and then another that he is investigating. They are both strong and I think they were too strong to run together, I wanted to read them as separate stories and feel I would have got a better understanding of them.

Even though there were some elements of this story that didn’t work for me or that I struggled with, this is a book I would still recommend. It is a strong, complex crime, mystery,thriller with King as the main protagonist who is gritty, emotional and interesting.

I really enjoyed Down The River Unto the Sea. I read and liked the early Easy Rawlins novels, but ran into diminishing returns with them and haven't read any Walter Mosely since. I was very pleased to find that he seems to have begun a new, very good series.

Joe King Oliver is a disgraced NYPD detective who was framed and kicked off the force a decade before the book opens. He is now working as a private detective and is asked to take a case investigating the conviction of a man for shooting two police officers for which he is sentenced to death. He also begins to look into the circumstances of his own downfall on the force, and the two appear to be related somehow.

It's a very well told story. Mosely writes very good prose and Joe's narrative voice is extremely convincing, as is the milieu of New York's underworld. He creates excellent, believable characters, especially Joe himself, who is flawed but fundamentally honest and decent – and gravely damaged by his experience in prison. That experience is evoked brilliantly; it's a fairly brief but exceptionally powerful passage, and all the more affecting for not being laboured. His relationship with his teenage daughter is also exceptionally well done, I thought. I found the story very good (although he does meet an awful lot of people so it's not easy to keep track of the characters) and I was gripped throughout.

In summary, this is a gripping, readable crime novel with some genuine weight, too. I can recommend it warmly and I look forward to more Joe Oliver.

(My thanks to Weidenfeld and Nicolson for and ARC via NetGalley.)

I am always going to read the latest Walter Mosley book as I have read every single thing he has written. His books have a special place in my heart and even though there is much that feels familiar in this one, I still loved it. It might not quite be there with the Easy Rawlins series, but Mosley still has me with his ability to create a large cast of memorable characters, even when they only have minor roles and his exceptional skills in writing and dialogue. Our central character here is Joe King Oliver, a proud, gifted and upstanding black cop with NYPD, who ends up incarcerated in Rikers Island Prison for rape and sexual assault charges after being framed by shadowy forces in the police force. Prison breaks him completely and he only survives after being transferred to solitary. He is shaken to find he has a killer within him and traumatised as his life falls apart, his wife disowns him, refusing to bail him. After a little more than 90 days, he is released as charges are dropped. Sergeant Gladstone helps him piece together a life as a private investigator, and 10 years later he is being helped by his precious daughter, Aja-Denise.

Oliver is a troubled figure, still experiencing a form of PTSD after NYPD insisted on letting him go with no pension or benefits. His past rears its ugly head when he receives a letter from the woman who set him up, expressing her guilt, how she was forced to entrap him and her need to put things right publicly. She has a name of the cop behind it. Joe now feels he can take on his own case, especially as Aja has now grown up. He begins to pull at the threads of the leads he has, looking for a partner to work the case with him. To this end, he hones in on sociopath and killer, Melquash Frost, who feels he owes Joe, and Mel proves his worth as Joe is forced to drop below the radar when his life is threatened. However, Joe feels a dissonance in his values and identity, leading to a shift from his previous conventional morality, to more ambiguous terrain, pushed there by his implacable, powerful and ruthless enemies. Simultaneously, Joe takes on the case of A Free Man, a man convicted of the shooting of 2 cops, on death row, but a man, who like him, has been framed. It slowly becomes apparent there are connections between the two cases and it appears that justice in either case is beyond reach.

Mosley writes a compelling tale of injustice and a police force unwilling to acknowledge its murderous and corrupt history amidst a New York that includes gangsters, heroin addicts, damaged souls and the survival of indomitable spirits, against all the odds. I imagine Joe King Oliver will have other outings, at least I hope so. I found his complex character, with his loving relationship with his daughter and the criminal Melquash, so utterly gripping. He was once a true blue NYPD cop, circumstances propel him to evolve his sense of identity and his perception of what is going to be his new place in the world. Always a pleasure to read Mosley, and for me, it always will be. Many thanks to Orion for an ARC.

This is wonderful top-flight Mosley - a flawed attractive PI, ex-cop who should not have been incarcerated and drummed from the force because he was framed(and as we find out, more than he knew - surrounded by betrayals, but able to forgive and see to the heart of people around him - people do wrong for good reasons, and his new partner is a criminal who he was fair to in the past ... these things count in the world Mosley creates for Joe... I absolutely loved this and read it to the end where there were more twists and essential turns than ever - underlying all is an abiding love for daughters by betrayers and Joe alike... humane and readable (even if a bit complex ... not sure about one of the cases still ... but it did not matter) .. maybe Mosley has in mind making Joe the center of a new seriesI hope , I hope. Superb and gripping.