In “Down the River Unto the Sea,” the much acclaimed writer Walter Mosley introduces a new detective, New York City habitué John King Oliver, in this enigmatically titled, problematic novel.
Mulholland Books ($27).
The author of the colorful Easy Rawlins series can be a wonderful writer. Mr. Mosley’s descriptions of New York City denizens, dives and secret places are rich, even pungent. But the interactions of Oliver with too many different kinds of people make the tangled plot lines of this mystery hard to follow.
Oliver, a former city cop named after a legendary New Orleans cornetist, has two mysteries to solve. He’s hired to spring a journalist named A Free Man from prison, where Man has been sent for killing two New York policemen accused of trafficking in people and drugs.
At the same time, prompted by a letter from a woman seeking redemption for framing him years ago, Oliver focuses on finding out why he was expelled from the force and brutalized in prison.
The focus is one of the problems, as Mr. Mosley scrambles those plot lines, putting Oliver in touch with nemeses such as the fixer Augustine Antrobus, the cop facilitator Reggie Teegs, and ambiguous players like a cop apologist named Gladstone. At the same time, Mr. Mosley lavishes too much detail on incidental figures like this man, a way station for Oliver on his way to closure of his own case:
“Kierin Klasky weighed well north of four hundred pounds. He could have willed his face to be sewn into a basketball after he died, it was that large and round. The features of his physiognomy were mostly just fat, as were his bloated hands and ham-round thighs.”
Mr. Mosley could have cut “it was that large and round.” You already had the picture.
If he occasionally overwrites, he also undercharacterizes. Oliver takes the subway one evening. Next to him is a young woman named Kenya Norman, reading a Hermann Hesse book.
They talk about spirituality. Perhaps Kenya reminds Oliver of Aja-Denise, his daughter, who works with Oliver at his detective agency. Who knows? This is Kenya’s only appearance. It goes nowhere.
A more serious flaw: Mr. Mosley portrays Oliver as a sensual man, given to womanizing. A video showing him in flagrante delicto persuaded his wife to bust him, leading to his imprisonment and the coarsening of his own nature. Ironically, however, it seems the only relationships Oliver can enter into with women are transactional; even his bond to Aja-Denise is largely work-based.
Granted, Oliver is a good father, keeping Aja-Denise in line and dressed proper. But for a novel designed to portray a lusty man, “Down the River Unto the Sea” is curiously chaste. Save for an oily massage session with a friend who is a former prostitute, it’s almost prudish; no consummation here.
Still, Mr. Mosley can snap the reader to attention. His dialogue is up-to-the-minute, his gift for the phrase sharp, as in this picture of a world-weary prison guard:
“She was handsome the way beautiful women get after they pass the age of forty. But she was a young woman, in her late twenties, aged by prison and a life that charged more than it gave back.”
Walter Mosley is also timely, salting this with nods to today’s headlines.
Here, Melquarth, Oliver’s satanic helper, muses on the best way to learn how to commit dastardly deeds: get sent to “a prison where there’s a lot of Russians. They always have the most organized gangs and they’re connected to people from the old country and Eastern Europe in general; those people often have ties to intelligence.”
Descriptions, commentary and tantalizing sketches of a host of underground characters make this worth reading despite its shortfalls.
Carlo Wolff is a freelance writer from suburban Cleveland.
First Published: July 27, 2018, 4:00 p.m.