Mosley (Charcoal Joe, 2016, etc.) begins what looks to be a new series with a protagonist whose territory covers New York City's outer boroughsand, yes, that means Staten Island, too.Joe King Oliver was an ace investigator with the NYPD until his roving eye helped him get framed for sexual assault. "Trouble ambushed me with my pants down and my nose open," as he explains to an acquaintance. He is kicked off the force and thrown into Riker's Island, where he faces the kind of demeaning and vicious attacks a jailed cop would expect from inmates until a stretch in solitary confinement and an abrupt release save his life. Eleven years later, King (as some of his friends call him) is making a living as a private eye based on Brooklyn's Montague Street when his mundane existence is jolted by two events: a letter from a woman admitting she was coerced into setting him up years before and a case involving a radical black activist who's been sentenced to death for killing two corrupt, abusive officers. King sees serendipity in the convergence of these two cases, believing that if he could exonerate the activist, it'd be a way of finally exorcising his rueful memories. His dual inquiries carry him from glittering Wall Street offices to seedy alleyways all over the city, and he encounters double-dealing lawyers, shady cops, drug addicts, hired killers, and prostitutes along the way. The only people King can count on are his loyal and precocious 17-year-old daughter, Aja-Denise, and an equally loyal but tightly wound career criminal named Melquarth "Mel" Frost, whose capacity for violence will remind Mosley devotees of Mouse, the homicidal thug who either helps or hinders Easy Rawlins in the author's first and best-known series. Indeed, so many aspects of this novel are reminiscent of other Mosley books that it tempts one to wonder whether he's stretching his resources a little thin. But ultimately it's Mosley's signature stylerough-hewn, rhythmic, and lyricalthat makes you ready and eager for whatever he's serving up.It's getting to be a bigger blues band on Mosley's stage, with Joe King Oliver now sitting in with Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill. But as long as it sounds sweet and smoky, let the good times roll. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* Since Mosley launched his Easy Rawlins series to universal acclaim with Devil in a Blue Dress (1990), he has published more than 50 books across multiple genres. Now he begins a new series, starring PI Joe King Oliver, and it rekindles some of the remarkable energy that drove the early Rawlins novels. Oliver was an NYPD detective until he was framed by parties unknown for sexual assault and wound up at Rikers, looking at serious time. His one remaining friend on the force gets Joe released and sets him up with a PI agency, where Joe has been toiling in desultory fashion for the last decade, supported at the agency by his teen daughter. Two new cases change everything. First, the woman Joe was accused of assaulting contacts him, admitting to taking part in the frame-up and prompting Joe to investigate his own case. Meanwhile, he takes on another case every bit as politically incendiary as his own: helping a radical African American journalist escape the electric chair. Mosley writes with great power here about themes that have permeated his work: institutional racism, political corruption, and the ways that both of these issues affect not only society at large but also the inner lives of individual men and women. And he has created a new hero in Joe Oliver with the depth and vulnerability to sustain what readers will hope becomes a new series. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With the Easy Rawlins series, though still strong, showing some signs of aging, it's the perfect moment for Mosley to unveil an exciting new hero and a series set in the present and confronting the issues that drive today's headlines.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2017 Booklist

Graham's low, whispery voice is a perfect match for the protagonist of Mosley's standalone about a former NYPD detective turned private eye whose police career unraveled after he served nine months in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Joe King Oliver lives in the shadows as he tries desperately to clear his own name while seeking justice for his client, a black journalist who been framed for supposedly killing two cops. Graham is totally convincing as the perpetually scared and often drunk Oliver, who, despite all his sordidness and depression, also manages to sound kind and caring, especially when interacting with his teen daughter. Graham gives her and each of the other secondary characters-Oliver's violent enemies, his loyal friends, and his ex-wife and love interest, among others-a subtly identifiable voice. Graham, like Mosley, is a master of depicting the complexity of the human spirit. Both author and actor work to enthrall listeners in Oliver's story. A Mulholland hardcover. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

The first thing Mosley (Charcoal Joe) devotees will want to know is whether Joe King Leonard is getting a series of his own. That future seems currently unclear, but should King proliferate on the page, then Dion Graham must be conscripted to continue his glorious aural interpretation. A former cop, King now runs King Detective Service with office coordination provided by his smart, savvy, 17-year-old daughter. Nine months in prison for a crime he didn't commit means King has experienced plenty he'd rather forget. Although charges were mysteriously dropped, King's badge is forever gone, but he has other connections-both legal and not-to continue his crusade for justice. Two cases keep him up at night-finding out who really sent him to Rikers and exonerating a militant journalist on death row for killing two corrupt cops. Prostitutes, dealers, addicts, and "-vicious criminal" Melquarth Frost prove to be King's most reliable allies and informants. Graham's vocal range shows no limits, regardless of gender, race, age, occupation, or other attributes. His richly resonating narration, infinitely capable of effortless chameleonic adaptations, never disappoints. VERDICT Libraries should prepare for high demand. ["Mosley fans will welcome another imaginative page-turner from a mystery grand master": LJ 12/17 review of the Mulholland: Little, Brown hc.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

HO-HO-??, kiddies. Here comes Bad Santa with another gift sack filled with mysteries, crime stories and body parts. Ugh, what's that gooey red stuff dripping out of Santa's bag? Not to worry, just some melted candy canes. Now, on to this year's rundown of the best Good Books for Bad Grown-Ups. MOST ORIGINAL MURDER method: For lashing a guy to his wheelchair, sealing his mouth with superglue and tossing him into a river, a Christmas angel goes to Ken Bruen's IN THE GALWAY SILENCE (Mysterious Press, $26). Better double the angels, though, because there are two victims - twins, no less. SOFTEST HARD-BOILED PRIVATE EYE: That would be Isaiah (IQ) Quintabe, Joe Ide's brainy P.I. from Los Angeles, who is paid for his services in casseroles, cookies and reindeer sweaters. In WRECKED (Mulholland, $27), the detective accepts a painting from a beautiful client who hires him to find her mother. But this modest missingpersons case leads to a vengeance drama involving an electric cattle prod with enough volts "to knock a steer sideways." MOST UNPRINTABLE DIALOGUE: Lots of competition here, but the angel goes to John Sandford's madly entertaining Virgil Flowers mystery HOLY GHOST (Putnam, $29). Virgil, an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, brings a wry sense of humor to the miraculous when the Blessed Virgin pays a visit to a church in Wheatfield, making a bundle of dough for the tiny town. CREEPIEST SETTING: No contest! Anne Perry wins that one with her latest Victorian mystery, DARK TIDE RISING (Ballantine, $28). William Monk, commander of the Thames River Police, takes us to Jacob's Island, a place "like death," where rotting houses are slowly sinking into a "thick, viscous mud that sucked anything of weight into itself, like quicksand." MOST CUTTING WIT: Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski walks away with this angel. In SHELL GAME (Morrow, $27.99), the Chicago P.I. slips into an office after hours by posing as a maid, reasoning that "anyone who's cleaning up after you is part of your furniture, not a person." Needing a foreign language to hide behind, she improvises with the lyrics to "Vissi d'arte." TOUGHEST PUZZLE: I dare you to match wits with Keigo Higashino. Giles Murray's translation of NEWCOMER (Minotaur, $27.99) presents Higashino's fabled Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective, Kyoichiro Kaga (he of the "razor-sharp mind and bloodhound nature"), with a series of minor enigmas wrapped around a brainbusting central mystery: Who murdered a woman with no enemies? PRETTIEST LANGUAGE: That makes two angels for Ken Bruen, whose Irish roughneck, Jack Taylor, talks like an angel himself - only dirtier. IN THE GALWAY SILENCE (Mysterious Press, $26) gives this hotheaded detective good cause for rage, being a fictional treatment of, among other things, a notorious case of systemic fetal death and infanticide in Irish convents. BEST MILEAGE FROM A ROLLING STONE: There's no moss on Jack Reacher. In PAST TENSE (Delacorte, $28.99), Lee Child's peripatetic hero wanders with a purpose, all the way to his father's birthplace in Laconia, N.H. Reacher's search for his roots in this sad old mill town ("a horrific tableau of clouds of smoke and raging fires") is surprisingly sentimental, but brace yourself for the subplot. BEST CHARACTERS OUT OF THEIR DEPTH: What better definition of George Pelecanos's great guys, so human and so doomed? In the man who came uptown (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $27), Michael Hudson emerges from prison a bona fide bibliophile, thanks to the librarian who turned him away from crime and onto books. But this can't last when bad friends realize they need a good guy to drive a getaway car. BEST NATURE STUDY, RED IN TOOTH & CLAW: Delia Owens speaks softly in WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING (Putnam, $26), a tenderly told first novel that begins in 1969, when two boys on bikes come upon a body half submerged in a swamp. The rest of the story reveals how the corpse got there and why we might wish it had never been found. MOST COLORFUL CHARACTER NAMESJames Lee Burke is rightly admired for his lush Louisiana bayou crimescapes. But ROBICHEAUX (Simon & Schuster, $27.99) reminds us of his talent for naming locals like Baby Cakes Babineau and Pookie the Possum Domingue, along with a contract killer called Chester Wimple. ("Sometimes people call me Smiley.") LOUDEST BANG FOR THE BUCK: Half the members of the Los Angeles Police Department's bomb squad are blown to smithereens in Thomas Perry's THE BOMB MAKER (Mysterious Press, $26). "Bombs were acts of murder," Perry allows, but "they were also jokes on you, riddles the bomber hoped were too tough for you." WEEPIEST WEEPER: Wounded World War I veterans and grieving widows make up much of the shrunken population of the town of Wolfpit, encountered by Inspector Ian Rutledge in THE GATEKEEPER (Morrow, $26.99). Charles Todd's hero, himself a victim of shell shock, is one of the moodiest detectives in the genre. COOLEST DEBUT: By their taste in music shall ye know them. Joe King Oliver, a New York private eye who makes his debut in Walter Mosley's new crime novel, DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA (Mulholland/ Little, Brown, $27), went into prison with a love of classic jazz masters like Fats Waller. He emerged with a taste for the tormented sounds of Thelonious Monk. MOST SIMPÁTICO DETECTIVE: Donna Leon's Venetian policeman, Commissario Guido Brunetti, bares his bleeding heart in THE TEMPTATION OF FORGIVENESS (Atlantic Monthly, $26) when he aids a woman whose 15-year-old son is taking drugs. He advises her to cook dinner for her children, "to show them you're all right and life is normal." CRUELEST MURDERER: Jeffery Deaver indulges his singular flair for ghastly irony in THE CUTTING EDGE (Grand Central, $28). HIS killer unkindly murders couples at their happiest moments - when, say, they're buying an engagement ring or picking out a bridal gown. Don't plan your wedding until you've read this one. NASTIEST TWIST: The F.B.I. agent in Michael Koryta's HOW IT HAPPENED (Little, Brown, $27) is double-crossed by a fiend who leads him to a false dumping ground of murder victims. "The Bureau rarely fires agents," a colleague pitilessly reassures the disgraced agent. "We just bury them." QUIRKIEST SLEUTH: Charlie Parker, John Connolly's private eye, is chronically depressed, which makes him both endearing and unpredictable: "If there's trouble, he'll find it. If there isn't trouble, he'll make some." That predilection suits his heroic role in the woman in the woods (Emily Bestier/Atria, $26.99) as the savior of battered women. MURDER MOST BESTIAL: Poachers are killing black bears in the Turk Mountain Preserve in rural Virginia, which riles Rice Moore, the nature-loving hero of James A. McLaughlin's BEARSKIN (Ecco/HarperCollins, $26.99), a loner who finds the "complex social network" of bears far more interesting than the human dynamics at the local bar. MARILYN STASIO has covered, crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.