Known for his long and popular mystery series featuring Los Angeles private eye Easy Rawlins, American author Walter Mosley’s new series stars Leonid McGill, an unlicensed detective in New York who works as a “fixer” — bringing people and situations together to solve problems and avoid violence.

McGill wasn’t always such a peace-loving man and his past still haunts him. Those he once knew still come to him for favours, and it is one of these requests that opens The Long Fall. McGill is asked by a mystery client to find four young men linked by a past crime. Breaking his new rule about learning to ask the right questions at the beginning of a case, he sets out with little information and a nagging sense he’s being used. It turns out he was right.

The plot is complicated and Mosley expertly teases his readers as he describes McGill bit by bit throughout the novel. We learn early on that he’s an ex-boxer who, when clothed, looks like a chubby little man, but he can still use his fists to sort out most problems. He’s as likely to call on the most powerful bureaucrat in New York for help as he is to ask a reformed hitman for backup in a dicey situation. And McGill’s family situation is much more than just a little complicated.

The Long Fall is set in modern-day New York, and the city features as prominently throughout the novel as any other character. When McGill travels on the subway or walks the streets, Mosley’s descriptions of the city evoke visual, gritty images of McGill’s world and the people he encounters.

McGill is a man trying to change his life, but he’s too often pulled back into the world he’s trying to escape — a familiar theme in the mystery genre. What sets his struggle apart, though, is Mosley’s expert writing and McGill’s character — a strange and charismatic man with a moral compass he can’t escape.

Unlike other reformed heroes in the mystery field, McGill is a man without judgment. His harshest criticisms are reserved for himself and his flaws. Mosley has created a character that transcends the mystery genre, who will hopefully lead as long a life in modern New York City as Easy Rawlins has in mid-century Los Angeles.