PI and former cop Joe King Oliver is slowly recovering from the trauma he endured after being imprisoned for crimes he didn't commit (Down the River unto the Sea, 2018). Then he lands in the middle of something that will bring him new nightmares. Inexplicably, Joe's 93-year-old grandmother, Brenda, the daughter of Black sharecroppers, has taken up residence with blue-blooded multibillionaire Roger Ferris, who asks Joe to determine if white nationalist Quiller is innocent of the murder charge against him. Joe wants nothing to do with the repugnant Quiller but agrees to poke around out of loyalty to his grandmother. The more Joe pokes, the more he arouses the lethal ire of rich white men who don't want a Black sleuth getting his hands on a document purportedly in Quiller's possession--one detailing the transgressions of the country's power brokers. The plot takes some overly byzantine turns, but Mosley again shows his talent for character building, not only in the many-sided Joe, as vulnerable as he is resilient, but also in a superb supporting cast, including Joe's daughter, Aja, and mercenary Oliya, who could easily front her own series. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The second King Oliver novel lives up to the excitement generated by its Edgar-winning predecessor.

The tendency of PI Joe King Oliver, a former New York City cop, to take on two cases at once lands him in hot water in Edgar winner Mosley's entertaining sequel to 2018's Down the River unto the Sea. When his grandmother's billionaire boyfriend asks him to look into the arrest and incarceration of an alt-right movement leader and race baiter, Joe doubts the validity of the charges, but is reluctant to become involved with a notorious bigot. Meanwhile, the husband of his ex-wife, Monica, has been arrested for selling heating oil as diesel fuel through connections to the Russian mob. Despite Monica's unpleasant combativeness, Joe agrees to investigate for the sake of his high school valedictorian daughter, Aja. Mosley's characteristic writing style is on full display, including his love of unusual similes ("The window gazed upon New Jersey but it was a misty day, making the Garden State look like a half-formed idea"). Joe continues to fascinate as a protagonist, and the secondary characters enrich the story whether they figure into the main action or not. While it may not quite measure up to his outstanding series opener, this is a worthy successor. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins Loomis. (Feb.)

At the behest of his friend Roger Ferris, a White billionaire, Black ex-cop Joe King Oliver investigates the government's mysterious detainment of a White nationalist. The 91-year-old Ferris, who lives much of the time with Oliver's strong-willed 93-year-old grandmother, is sure that Alfred Xavier Quiller, poster boy for the alt-right group Men of Action, was set up on charges of murder and selling secrets to the Russians. As odious an individual as Quiller is, Oliver takes on the case as a defender of civil rights. That means returning to Rikers Island, where Quiller is being held--and where Oliver spent three hellish months in solitary after having been framed by dirty cops. The detective, introduced in Down the River Unto the Sea (2018), also has his hands full with the arrest of his ex-wife Monica's husband for his involvement with Russian mobsters in a corporate scheme to sell heating oil as diesel fuel. As knotty as the plot can get, the book is consistently lifted by the intelligence of its characters. Not your everyday zealot, Quiller is a scholar, poet, painter, animal rights activist, and genius inventor--and he's married to a Black woman whose attraction to him in spite of his racism makes her quite the enigma. Mosley is in top form as a social observer: Absolute poverty, muses his protagonist, is being imprisoned: "the experience of being slowly murdered by a state of being." Mosley's reportorial eye is equally sharp in making details count, including the skin tones of his characters. In Oliver's world, it matters that his grandmother is "black as a moonless night on an ancient sea." It also matters that she can get shot in the butt and shrug it off. A strong second outing by Mosley's new hero. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.