All I Did Was Shoot My Man (Leonid McGill Series #4)

by Walter Mosley

Overview

In this gritty, fast-paced crime novel, a resilient ex-con seeks redemption and uncovers a web of high-stakes secrets as Detective Leonid McGill tries to prove her innocence.

Zella Grisham never denied shooting her boyfriend. That’s not why she did eight years of hard time on a sixteen-year sentence. It’s that the shooting inadvertently led to charges of grand theft. Talk about bad luck.

Leonid McGill has reasons to believe she’s innocent. But reopening the case is only serving to unsettle McGill’s private life even further—and expose a family secret that’s like a kick to the gut.

As the case unfolds, as the truth of what happened eight years ago becomes more damning and more complex than anyone dreamed, McGill and Zella realize that everyone is guilty of something, and that sometimes the sins of the past can be too damaging to ever forget. Or ever forgive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451239167
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/05/2013
Series:	Leonid McGill Series , #4
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.53(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated, beloved, and bestselling writers. His books have been translated into at least twenty-one languages, and have won numerous awards. Born in Los Angeles, Mosley lives in New York City.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

January 12, 1952

Place of Birth:

Los Angeles, California

Education:

B.A., Johnson State College

Website:

http://www.waltermosley.com

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for All I Did Was Shoot My Man

“The best [McGill] book yet.”—The Boston Globe

“Like the city he works in, and the Mosley books he inhabits, Leonid McGill is complicated, savvy and full of surprises: a would-be champ who can't win for losing, a fighter who can never be counted out.”—The Wall Street Journal

“A big city never looks the same once you've walked its streets with a hard-boiled private eye. preferably someone as perceptive and thoughtful as Leonid McGill…[He] doesn't so much walk the city as case it for danger. Keeping pace with him is as much an education as an adventure.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Mosley ratchets up the tension with each new installment in his compelling series.”—Star-Ledger

“Walter Mosley has proven over and over again during the past two decades that he is not only one of America’s greatest mystery writers, but is one of America’s greatest writers period—an American literary treasure. And in All I Did Was Shoot My Man…Mosley has given us one of his best works ever. In Leonid McGill, Mosley has created a character Dostoyevsky would have loved. [He] has written a mystery novel that transcends the genre—a private-eye story for the new, uncertain and constantly dangerous century. All I Did Was Shoot My Man is one of the best books of [the year] and you can’t help but root for Leonid McGill. We have much to look forward to with this series. Kudos to Walter Mosley.”—BookReporter.com

“The best in the series to date…complex, satisfying.”—Publishers Weekly

“Exceptional storytelling.”—Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

Praise for All I Did Was Shoot My Man

“The best [McGill] book yet.”—The Boston Globe

“Like the city he works in, and the Mosley books he inhabits, Leonid McGill is complicated, savvy and full of surprises: a would-be champ who can't win for losing, a fighter who can never be counted out.”—The Wall Street Journal

“A big city never looks the same once you've walked its streets with a hard-boiled private eye. preferably someone as perceptive and thoughtful as Leonid McGill…[He] doesn't so much walk the city as case it for danger. Keeping pace with him is as much an education as an adventure.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Mosley ratchets up the tension with each new installment in his compelling series.”—Star-Ledger

“Walter Mosley has proven over and over again during the past two decades that he is not only one of America’s greatest mystery writers, but is one of America’s greatest writers period—an American literary treasure. And in All I Did Was Shoot My Man…Mosley has given us one of his best works ever. In Leonid McGill, Mosley has created a character Dostoyevsky would have loved. [He] has written a mystery novel that transcends the genre—a private-eye story for the new, uncertain and constantly dangerous century. All I Did Was Shoot My Man is one of the best books of [the year] and you can’t help but root for Leonid McGill. We have much to look forward to with this series. Kudos to Walter Mosley.”—BookReporter.com

“The best in the series to date…complex, satisfying.”—Publishers Weekly

“Exceptional storytelling.”—Library Journal

From the Publisher

Mosley…is in fine form in his fourth McGill mystery, a complicated tale of atonement and family.

The Washington Post - Yvonne Zipp

A big city never looks the same once you've walked its streets with a hard-boiled private eye. Preferably someone as perceptive and thoughtful as Leonid McGill, the shady but honorable bruiser-for-hire in an addictive series of New York crime novels by Walter Mosley. A former mob fixer who has gone straight, McGill doesn't so much walk the city as case it for danger. Keeping pace with him is as much an education as an adventure.

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

In Mosley’s fourth Leonid McGill mystery (after 2011’s When the Thrill Is Gone), the best in the series to date, the New York City PI tries to atone for a misdeed from his checkered past. Eight years earlier, McGill helped frame Zella Grisham for a part in the biggest Wall Street robbery in history— million stolen from Rutgers Assurance Corp. Zella was guilty of shooting her man, Harry Tangelo, when she found him in bed with her best friend, Minnie Lesser, but the eight years she served were due to the frame, not the shooting. McGill manages to get Zella released, setting in motion a chain of deadly events. Meanwhile, his difficult family life reaches full boil with each of his three adult children, Twill, Dimitri, and Shelly, as well as with his hard-drinking wife, Katrina. Unraveling the truth behind the robbery and the unrecovered millions tests McGill’s skills to the utmost in this complex, satisfying entry. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

In this fourth Leonid McGill mystery (after When the Thrill Is Gone), Mosley uses his exceptional storytelling skills to depict how his conflicted and compassionate PI sabotages himself as he battles to redeem himself and make amends to his family and coworkers. McGill is hired to investigate a strange case in which Zella Grisham admits to shooting her scheming husband after catching him in bed with another woman. Yet she's fuzzy about the $80,000 found in her closet that was part of a $6 million heist. Out on the mean streets of Manhattan, McGill reacquaints himself with his estranged, alcoholic wife; his misguided, eldest son, who left college to live with a prostitute; and his youngest son, who chooses to work as McGill's partner. VERDICT General readers and Mosley fans will appreciate his characteristically fine writing as well as the internal struggles Mosley inflicts on his protagonists. [See Prepub Alert, 7/18/11.]—Jerry P. Miller, Cambridge, MA

Library Journal

Once again, narrator Mirron Willis shares the philosophizing and flying bullets of Leonid McGill’s life. Assassins, scammers, young people leaving the nest, druggies, thugs, cops, and crooks are all portrayed in a medley of distinct voices and accents. While the voices of female characters are a bit pinched, Willis exceeds expectations with the main character. A former villain turned PI, McGill tries to help a woman who is being pursued by corporate crooks and gangsters who want to recover the millions she supposedly stole from them. Willis smoothly conveys the author’s love of language and niftily reflects McGill’s smooth transitions from home invasions to poetry readings. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2012 - AudioFile

The release of a convicted killer who doesn't happen to be a thief offers another crack at redemption for impossibly compromised New York private eye Leonid McGill (When the Thrill Is Gone, 2011, etc.). Zella Grisham is the only client McGill's ever had whom he knows to be innocent. Who could know better than him, when gambler Stumpy Brown, worried that the NYPD would link him to the $58 million Rutgers Assurance heist, hired McGill nine years ago to frame her for the theft? As Stumpy pointed out at the time, Zella made the perfect patsy because she was already headed for jail after shooting her lover Harry Tangelo when she found him in bed with Minnie Lesser, her former best friend. Now that McGill's lawyer, Breland Lewis, has wangled Zella's release, the frame-up isn't looking like such a good idea. Harry Tangelo has disappeared. So has the daughter Zella gave up for adoption. There's no trace of the missing $58 million, and McGill has no idea where to look for the loot. On the plus side, everyone he runs into, from low-rent grifter Sweet Lemon Charles to Rutgers bigwig Johann Brighton, acts as if they're involved in some sort of felonious activity. As usual, the list of suspicious characters extends to McGill's own family, even before they're nearly killed by a pair of nameless intruders. His wife Katrina, who pulled the plug on their sex life years ago, seems determined to drink herself to death. His blood son, Dimitri, has hooked up with unsuitable Tatyana Baranovich, an ex-hooker from Belarus, and plans to move in with her. McGill just hopes he can do a better job rescuing Katrina's son Twill from the life of crime he seems destined for than he's doing rescuing Zella Grisham from the consequences of the crime she never committed. Overplotted even by Mosley's standards, with precious little chance to savor each scene and speaker before they're hustled offstage to make room for the next.

Kirkus Reviews