It had the whippoorwill and the hoot owl and crickets for music. It had pale dead trees that stood out in the moonlight like the hands of dead men reaching out of the ground. It may be useful, at this point, to assure his many admirers that this is indeed the work of the Walter Mosley who has written four justly celebrated detective novels set in Los Angeles during the 15 years following World War II, and starring the serenely cool and competent Easy Rawlins. Several episodes are as well tuned as anything he has written, including the violent conclusion, and especially a tense and comic tour de force in which Kiki embezzles a million-dollar insurance policy from her company to pay for Soupspoon's chemotherapy. Sitting in the park, Soup meditates on ants and worms.
Wise sayings mount up all too quickly.
RL was Satan's favorite son. Unhappily, they make a lot more sense than the examples of Soup's lyrics, most of which are self-consciously arty and even foolish, confirming the reader's suspicion that Mr. Mosley knows very little about the blues or the lives of bluesmen. The author's pleasure in her is confirmed in the crazily ripe future he gives her. The boy's accidental death half a century ago was indirectly related to the rowdy night Mavis spent dancing to RL and Soupspoon in a juke joint. I run after it all these years.