I had never read Walter Mosley's work before. This bestselling author is hard to miss as he has penned countless PI novels based on two different main characters: Leonid McGill, a former boxer who is known in the parlance as a “fixer,” and Easy Rawlins, neither of whom play by the rules. Well, it wouldn’t be a good read if they did, now would it?

In TROUBLE IS WHAT I DO, Leonid is called upon by a 94-year-old African American blues guitarist, Phillip “Catfish” Worry, who instructs him to deliver a letter to Justine Sternman on the night before her wedding. Elaborate instructions are included. Discretion is the key; no one is to know that the letter is being delivered, or what it contains. Justine is one of those elegant debutantes, eligible for membership in the DAR, an organization open only to women who can trace their ancestry back to the Revolutionary War. She is also the daughter of a lily-white billionaire, a New York big shot known for his racist attitude and brutality in his business dealings.

"Mosley has that magical ability to draw the reader into the narrative. I was hooked and willing to sort out the myriad plot twists and intriguing characters, which included none other than Easy Rawlins himself."

The explosive letter also contains a page from Justine’s great-grandmother’s diary, which discloses that the blond, blue-eyed young lady and her father are not as purebred as they believed. Sure, this is unsettling for the recipient, but not that exciting a mission for Leonid. Until he hears a voice from the past. Underworld thug Ernie Eckles, aka the Mississippi Assassin, has been hired to kill Catfish, apparently by Justine’s father, Charles.

The plot gets a bit murky from there, at least to those who are unfamiliar with Mosley’s shelf load of previous books. But after I read the first two pages, I was reminded of another favorite Southern writer, James Lee Burke, who defines the players through his prose, their dialogue and accents, and how they dress. A great writer can set the scene and then pull you into it, while their lesser counterparts prattle on as you skip ahead to the action.

As I finished these early pages, I recalled dialing my sister after reading the opening paragraphs of Burke’s first Robicheaux novel, THE NEON RAIN. It so impressed me that I read it aloud over the phone. Mosley has that magical ability to draw the reader into the narrative. I was hooked and willing to sort out the myriad plot twists and intriguing characters, which included none other than Easy Rawlins himself.

At 166 pages, TROUBLE IS WHAT I DO is a quick and satisfying (if somewhat scrambled) return to the genre for Leonid McGill. And the coup de grâce makes it worth what little effort it takes to keep track of the cast. I will dig deeper to meet at my leisure some of these characters who populate Leonid’s world.