Walter Mosley's 'Known to Evil,' touches on race, redemption

Crime fiction novelist Walter Mosley discusses the themes and settings of his new book.

Author Walter Mosley is well known for his crime fiction series including the Los Angeles-set Easy Rawlins mysteries. Now Mosley has a new book featuring his more recent character, Leonid McGill, whose story is set in New York City.

Mosley spoke to Patt Morrison about the new book, “Known to Evil” and issues of race and the setting of the book.

Leonid McGill is a crooked detective trying to right his life in modern New York City, but Mosley wanted people to see a different side of New York.

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”It’s all the new people and the new way of seeing the city, and also it’s those places that only New Yorkers go to,” Mosley said.

“A street in Brooklyn where a guy has an office that looks like a bomb has hit it. Or a pool hall up in the Bronx that’s underneath a destroyed hovel of a home — there are places in New York that nobody knows about unless you’re a New Yorker, unless you’ve really lived there.”

McGill was raised on the streets of New York and has been a crooked cop in the past, but now he's looking to turn things around.

“I see him as a metaphor for America doing pretty much the wrong thing for 40, 50 years and then all of a sudden saying, ‘Well I want to do what’s right,’” Mosley said. “Well it’s very difficult to do what’s right after you’ve been doing what’s wrong.”

Mosley also touches on the issue of race and America in “Known to Evil.” Mosley tried to have his main character think about race the way he does.

“A lot of people lately have been talking about post-racial America, which I find so funny,” Mosley said. “But in a way, we are a meta-racial America — we’ve kind of risen above the clay of our bodies, and our minds have become like all races combined into one.”

Mosley also touched on the future of America.

“I’m just ecstatic about being in the 21st century. There’s so much potential in the world. There’s so much possibility in America,” he said. “As kind of slippery as it is, it’s really attempting to be something new.”