Leonid McGill Books

The widely praised New York Times bestseller, and Mosley's first new series since his acclaimed Easy Rawlins novels... Leonid McGill is an ex-boxer and a hard drinker looking to clean up his act. He's an old-school P.I. working a New York City that's gotten a little too fancy all around him. But it's still full of dirty secrets, and as McGill unearths them, his commitment to the straight and narrow is going to be tested to the limit...

"The newest of the great fictional detectives" ( Boston Globe ) from the New York Times bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins novels. When New York private eye Leonid McGill is hired to check up on a vulnerable young woman, all he discovers is a bloody crime scene-and the woman gone missing. His client doesn't want her found. The reason will put everything McGill cherishes in harm's way: his family, his friends, and his very soul.

From the author of the award winning Devil in a Blue Dress comes a short story rife with mystery and suspense, an enthralling introduction to the complex protagonist Leonid McGill. When Walter Mosley published the first Leonid McGill novel, The Long Fall —the acclaimed New York Times bestseller that is now being developed as a series for HBO—it was clear that this new hero was a man with a past. He was a private investigator who had “decided to go from crooked to slightly bent,” turning down the shady but lucrative work that New York’s thugs and mobsters had long brought to his door. In Karma , Walter Mosley tells us the story of the moment McGill decided to change his ways, when a seemingly classic femme fatale forced him to confront the reality of his life of corruption and betrayal. It was the culmination of a dark and tragic case that reached back through McGill’s entire career, plumbing the full, complex history of the soul-scarred figure now hailed as “a poignantly real character . . . [and] a more than worthy successor to Philip Marlowe.” ( The Boston Globe ) Originally published in Otto Penzler’s anthology Dangerous Women, Karma was included in Best American Mystery Stories 2006, edited by Scott Turow.

Leonid McGill is back, in the third-and most enthralling and ambitious-installment in Walter Mosley's latest New York Times - bestselling series. The economy has hit the private-investigator business hard, even for the detective designated as "a more than worthy successor to Philip Marlowe" ( The Boston Globe ) and "the perfect heir to Easy Rawlins" (Toronto Globe and Mail ). Lately, Leonid McGill is getting job offers only from the criminals he's worked so hard to leave behind. Meanwhile, his life grows ever more complicated: his favorite stepson, Twill, drops out of school for mysteriously lucrative pursuits; his best friend, Gordo, is diagnosed with cancer and is living on Leonid's couch; his wife takes a new lover, infuriating the old one and endangering the McGill family; and Leonid's girlfriend, Aura, is back but intent on some serious conversations... So how can he say no to the beautiful young woman who walks into his office with a stack of cash? She's an artist, she tells him, who's escaped from poverty via marriage to a rich collector who keeps her on a stipend. But she says she fears for her life, and needs Leonid's help. Though Leonid knows better than to believe every word, this isn't a job he can afford to turn away, even as he senses that-if his family's misadventures don't kill him first-sorting out the woman's crooked tale will bring him straight to death's door.

In this gritty, fast-paced crime novel, a resilient ex-con seeks redemption and uncovers a web of high-stakes secrets as Detective Leonid McGill tries to prove her innocence. Zella Grisham never denied shooting her boyfriend. That’s not why she did eight years of hard time on a sixteen-year sentence. It’s that the shooting inadvertently led to charges of grand theft. Talk about bad luck. Leonid McGill has reasons to believe she’s innocent. But reopening the case is only serving to unsettle McGill’s private life even further—and expose a family secret that’s like a kick to the gut. As the case unfolds, as the truth of what happened eight years ago becomes more damning and more complex than anyone dreamed, McGill and Zella realize that everyone is guilty of something, and that sometimes the sins of the past can be too damaging to ever forget. Or ever forgive.

P.I. Leonid McGill isn’t usually one to refuse a case. But when Hiram Stent, a man down on his luck, begs him to find a cousin who is about to inherit millions of dollars, he senses something fishy. His instincts prove right: The night after he turns Hiram away, Hiram is found dead and Leonid’s office is broken into. Feeling partly responsible for this bizarre turn of events, Leonid is forced to open an investigation that will pull him into the lurid history of an old-money New York family. Leonid’s personal life is no less troubling. As his wife recovers in an uptown sanatorium from a suicide attempt, his mistress’s conscience kicks in. To further complicate matters, the stunning Marella Herzog, as irresistible as she is dangerous, walks into his life—the perfect wrong woman at just the right time.

Morally ambiguous P.I. Leonid McGill is back -- and investigating crimes against society's most downtrodden -- in this installment of the beloved detective series from an Edgar Award-winning and bestselling crime novelist. Leonid McGill's spent a lifetime building up his reputation in the New York investigative scene. His seemingly infallible instinct and inside knowledge of the crime world make him the ideal man to help when Phillip Worry comes knocking. Phillip "Catfish" Worry is a 92-year-old Mississippi bluesman who needs Leonid's help with a simple task: deliver a letter revealing the black lineage of a wealthy heiress and her corrupt father. Unsurprisingly, the opportunity to do a simple favor while shocking the prevailing elite is too much for Leonid to resist. But when a famed and feared assassin puts a hit on Catfish, Leonid has no choice but to confront the ghost of his own felonious past. Working to protect his client and his own family, Leonid must reach the heiress on the eve of her wedding before her powerful father kills those who hold their family's secret. Joined by a team of young and tough aspiring investigators, Leonid must gain the trust of wary socialites, outsmart vengeful thugs, and, above all, serve the truth -- no matter the cost.