At a grand estate overlooking the Hudson River, Roger Ferris, the owner, places what will turn out to be a fateful call. He informs the recipient that his children are taking legal action to declare him incompetent and take over control of his international conglomerate, worth $8 billion.
If that weren’t enough, Ferris is seeking help to resolve a convoluted and politically sensitive dilemma. Alfred Xavier Quiller, a purported genius of the white nationalist alt-right movement is being secretly held in a private cell at Rikers Island, the subject of an investigation for tax evasion, murder of a U.S. citizen on foreign soil and selling sensitive information to the Russians.
There are a few more interesting complications. The 91-year-old Ferris, who is white and a supporter of Quiller, is living with a 93-year-old Black woman, who just happens to be the grandmother of the person Ferris is asking for help.
That person on the other end of the line is private eye Joe King Oliver, the main character in “Every Man a King” (Little, Brown & Co.), the long-anticipated followup to the 2018 novel “Down the River Unto the Sea” by Walter Mosely. Born in 1951, Mosely didn’t begin writing until age 34. He has been making up for lost time, claiming to have written daily ever since. Mosely has written more than 40 books, perhaps the best known of which is “Devil in a Blue Dress,” the first of a bestselling mystery series and made into a motion picture starring Denzel Washington in 1995.
In his call to Oliver, Ferris claims that the charges against Quiller are a setup and that his overriding interest is the violation of Quiller’s rights. But Oliver’s instincts lead him to wonder about the hold that Quiller has on Ferris that’s pulling him in. And how can Oliver, a Black man, square up his disdain for all that Quiller stands for with his allegiance to his grandmother and, by extension, the love of her life?
In the hands of a less accomplished writer, the complicated relationships and tangled plot line – with further complications yet to come – would be the ingredients in a recipe for a muddle of a novel. Not so with Mosely, who takes up the challenge in the spirit of his heroes from the heyday of detective fiction such as Dashiell Hammett.
Told in the first-person from Oliver’s world-weary perspective, Mosely makes the connection with “Down the River Unto the Sea” in short order. A former ace investigator for the NYPD, his meetup with Quiller at Riker’s surfaces Oliver’s own traumatic incarceration there, following a frame-up by his enemies inside the force, and provides readers new to the character with just enough exposition to bring them up to speed.
As if this weren’t enough of a plot line to chew on, a call from Oliver’s ex-wife, Monica, cranks up the pressure and the intrigue. She asks Oliver to intervene on behalf of her current husband, banker Coleman Tesserat, who’s been arrested in connection with a fraud involving “...something about heating oil...” and the Russian mob.
For about a nanosecond, Oliver wonders whether he should drop one or both cases. Then we’re off to the races, following Oliver as he encounters colorful characters with improbable monikers like Rembert Carmody and D’Artagnon Aramois, and ping-ponging between such far-flung locales as Atlanta, Queens and Peanut, Ky.
Along the way, Mosely occasionally dashes off lines that would have made Hammett jealous: “Water was lapping up against the pylons that held up the outer deck and half the house. It sounded like alien whispers about things I will never understand.”
Danger, intrigue, testing the limits of loyalty to loved ones; Mosely expertly connects them all in a neatly wrapped package that can only serve to raise readers’ anticipation of Joe King Oliver’s next case.
Join our readers whose generous donations are making it possible for you to read our news coverage. Help keep local journalism alive and our community strong. Donate today.
