Craig Zablo

Any time a new Walter Mosley novel is announced, it is cause for celebration.  If it is an Easy Rawlins tale, the party goes to the next level.  Get ready to go to the next level.  FAREWELL, AMETHYSTINE drops June 4, 2024.  Here’s the synopsis…

Easy Rawlins’ latest client sends him down a warren of memory and nostalgia, blinding him to reason and risk, from “master of the genre,” (Washington Post) Walter Mosley.

January 1970 finds Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, LA’s premier Black detective, at 50 years of age despite all expectations. He has a loving family, a beautiful home, and a thriving investigation agency. All is right with the world… and then Amethystine Stoller, his own personal Helen of Troy, arrives. Her ex-husband is missing. A simple enough case. But even as Easy takes his first step in the investigation he trips. He falls into the memory of things past. Little things, like loss, love, a world war, and a hunger that has eaten at him since he was a Black boy on his own on the streets of Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas.

The missing ex, a young white man named Curt Fields, is found dead. Easy’s only real friend in the LAPD, Melvin Suggs, has gone into hiding rather than allow his femme fatale wife to go to the gas chamber. And that’s only the beginning.

Easy finds himself pressed into a reckoning. All of his success cannot succor his heart. The 1970’s have ushered in new expectations of men and women, Black and White, and Easy has to make a choice that will almost certainly hasten a permanent descent, one that might sunder his soul.

Deal me in.

TRIPWIRE by Lee Child

First sentence…

Jack Reacher saw the guy step in through the door.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Jack Reacher lives off the grid, traveling from place to place with just the clothes on his back. Reacher, a few years retired from the military at age 39, is enjoying life in Key West.  For the last few months, he’s made his living digging pools during the day and bouncing at a local strip club at night.

Life is good.

Then one night a private eye named Costello shows up at the club looking for Jack Reacher.  Costello is sent on his way after being told there’s no “Jack Reacher” there.  A little later a couple of thugs show up at the club’s door.  They’re also looking for Jack Reacher.  Like Costello, they’re sent packing,

The next day a P.I. named Costello is found murdered.

Reacher decides to find out more about Costello and the two thugs looking for him.  The trail leads back to one of Reacher’s former commanders, recently deceased, and his daughter, now a fully grown woman.  While Reacher is meeting with her an attempt is made to kill them both.  Reacher has no idea who is behind this or why.  As he investigates, he learns the answer dates back three decades.  As Reacher sorts out the mystery, a rich, badly burned, one-armed sociopath continues to work behind the scenes, torturing and murdering all in his path, to reach his final goal.

+++++
The villain of TRIPWIRE is a worthy adversary for Reacher.  He breaks people mentally and then abuses them physically before slowly killing them.  He’s rich, powerful and has thugs to do his bidding when he doesn’t want to dirty his hand.  Yep, hand.  He has just one.  One the end of his other arm is a sharpened hook.  Which he loves to put to “good” use.

Bravo to Lee Child for creating a satisfying ending that resolves the mystery with enough action to satisfy the most hardcore fan.

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