cover image And Sometimes I Wonder About You: A Leonid McGill Mystery

And Sometimes I Wonder About You: A Leonid McGill Mystery

Walter Mosley. Doubleday, $26.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-385-53918-0

Leonid McGill slogs his way through a morass of personal and professional problems in Mosley's outstanding fifth mystery featuring the New York City PI (after 2012's All I Did Was Shoot My Man). People giving him trouble include a modern-day Fagin, who's entangled with McGill's son Twill in some criminal enterprises; the ex-fianc%C3%A9 of a woman McGill is involved with; and a client he rejected. Women have always complicated McGill's life and continue to do so: his emotionally fragile wife, Katrina, is in a sanatorium after a failed suicide attempt; his sometime lover, Aura Ullman, is keeping her distance; and he's attracted to the beautiful Marella Herzog, whom he meets on the train from Philadelphia to New York. McGill deals with his professional problems with a combination of brute force and wiliness, while the women in his life tie him in emotional knots. The return of his father, Tolstoy McGill, the left-wing revolutionary who abandoned his family years ago, roils McGill even more than the women. Mosley's sharp ear for dialogue and talent for sketching memorable characters are much in evidence in this installment, further deepening his complex lead. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins/Loomis Agency. (May)