The novel is, in many ways, a series of vignettes. Though it's awkward to see characters reintroduced in every chapter, the format works overall. On their own, the stories are insightful and vivid, coloring the urban landscape with rough hues and painful truths while presenting a uniquely layered protagonist. Mosley clearly doesn't need the crutch that is the mystery-novel story board. Socrates squats in an abandoned building and does his best to control the temper that landed him a murder rap decades before.
Few people think about the messy aftermath of re-entering society.
But Mosley does. And no one is going to get away from it without being touched. Socrates' personality and background give him a world view like no other. Mosley's description of the bookstore that provided Socrates' first post-prison haven, only to become a charcoal skeleton in the 1992 riots, is heartbreaking. Socrates befriends the owners who, unable to have children, nurture the small store for decades.