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All I Did Was Shoot My Man
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All I Did Was Shoot My Man
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All I Did Was Shoot My Man
Audiobook8 hours

All I Did Was Shoot My Man

Written by Walter Mosley

Narrated by Mirron Willis

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

In the latest and most surprising novel in the bestselling Leonid McGill series, Leonid finds himself caught between his sins of the past and an all-too-vivid present.

Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed with her friend. The weekend before, $6.8 million had been stolen from Rutgers Assurance Corp., whose offices are across the street from where Zella worked. Zella didn't remember shooting Harry, but she didn't deny it either. The district attorney was inclined to call it temporary insanity-until the police found $80,000 from the Rutgers heist hidden in her storage space.

For reasons of his own, Leonid McGill is convinced of Zella's innocence. But as he begins his investigation, his life begins to unravel. His wife is drinking more than she should. His oldest son has dropped out of college and moved in with an exprostitute. His youngest son is working for him and trying to stay within the law. And his father, whom he thought was long dead, has turned up under an alias.

A gripping story of murder, greed, and retribution, All I Did Was Shoot My Man is also the poignant tale of one man's attempt to stay connected to his family.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 24, 2012
ISBN9781101538494
Unavailable
All I Did Was Shoot My Man
Author

Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley is the author of over twenty critically acclaimed books and his work has been translated into twenty-one languages. His popular mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins began with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990, which was later made into a film starring Denzel Washington. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he now lives in New York.

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Reviews for All I Did Was Shoot My Man

Rating: 3.732325656565657 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Nice entry in the series switching between real cases and real peril and Leonid's strange and exhausting family.

    I like the contrast between this series with its cellphones and computer hacking and Mosley's period-set Easy Rawlins books. Good to know there's already another one of these for me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I've noticed that the plots of the best noir fiction (The Maltese Falcon & The Big Sleep for example) are so convoluted that you need a scorecard to even hope to figure out who done it. They also tend to share a similar style of prose that is at the same time brutal and lyrical. This stands to reason as noir, by definition draws its power from the stark contrast of darkness and light.Walter Mosley is one of the best living authors of noir fiction. His Easy Rawlins series does for postwar Los Angeles what Chester Himes' Coffin Ed Johnson & Gravedigger Jones did for Harlem's golden age. His newest character, Leonid McGill, is a former New York boxer and fixer for mobsters turned private investigator. Even his home life is convoluted. The son of a Marxist revolutionary who abandoned his family to fight for the cause in South America, McGill has built for himself a life of interlaced loves and relationships that make Desperate Housewives look simple. In McGill, Mosley often combines the simmering violence of a gangster with the philosophical musings of a scholar. "I hit him more times than necessary but by then my actions were mostly chemical, like a soldier ant or a teenager in love.""All I Did Was Shoot My Man" is the fourth Leonid McGill mystery. While it's probably best to read the books in order, it isn't absolutely necessary. The book does contain references to events in previous books but it also refers to earlier events unassociated with his other books so that in the end I couldn't tell which was which and stopped worrying about it.Through much of this book, McGill suffers from some undiagnosed illness that gave him a low-grade fever. As it is narrated in the first person, this infuses the story with the surreal, almost hallucinatory feel that increases the reader's sense of uncertainty as to what exactly is going on and what threats are around the next corner.Mosley's ability to create characters and stories is so good that it's hard to imagine that he once earned his living as a programmer. At one author event a woman could not be convinced that he had never been a boxer because he wrote about it so well. Mosley finally took off his glasses, shook his head and said, "Ma'am, I've never killed anybody either but I've been known to write about that, too."In the end, I enjoyed "All I Did Was Shoot My Man". It's not my favorite Mosley book, but then Leonid McGill isn't my favorite Mosley character. But then, even the worst book by Walter Mosley is better than the best most other authors have to offer.*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review copy of this book was obtained from the publisher via the Amazon Vine Program.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A Book Review: All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley

    This is book review of a story that promised to be about one thing and then turned out to be a story of a different kind.

    Walter Mosley is touted to be a bestselling author by the New York Times. His book, All I Did Was Shoot My Man promised to be a story of a woman, Zella, who had shot her boyfriend when she caught him in bed with her best friend and then later was framed for a robbery she did not commit. Ironically Zella gets sent to prison for the robbery she did not commit while she probably would have gotten off on the shooting. When she gets out of prison years later she is helped by a private investigator to find out about the robbery frame up.

    That is the story I thought I would read; I got something different. Zella is barely mentioned in the story while the investigator, Leonid McGill, and his life seem to be the main focus of the storyline. The story itself started out very boring. It was not until more than thirty chapters into the story that there was some action happening to make the story come to life.

    Although All I Did Was Shoot My Man started out rather boring (or at least seemed that way to me) and the story actually portrayed in this book was different than what I thought it was going to be, I realized at some point that I wanted to find out how Leonid McGill would fare in this case he was working,

    I am not sure I would read anything else by Walter Mosley unless I was in the mood for a boring mystery of a different kind or looking forward to reading one story and getting another. It should be noted here as well, that now that I have had a chance to think it over, that may have been one of the twists of the story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    He can write men. He can write dialogue. He can write locale. He can write action.

    But his women are not real--maybe that is a given in a mystery.

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not up to Mosley's usually high standards
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a quick read-- though which propelled it along faster, the sharp dialogue or the constantly-emerging events, would be hard to say. Both were equally compelling. Leonid McGill may be a man of relatively few words, but what he says, he says well, and it cuts to the bone. Mosely keeps the pace of the book spinning rapidly along, with the web of events (fraught to begin with) growing ever more complex with each succeeding chapter-- both in terms of the mystery and in McGill's personal life. At times, I did need to slow down a bit and review what had happened up to that point to make sure I was following things completely, as the plot (in essence: there was a robbery some years back, and McGill planted evidence that implicated a woman who was innocent of that crime, though not of shooting the "man" of the title) was rather convoluted (all the better to be left guessing who the guilty party is in the end). The book ends on no easy conclusions; the mystery may be "solved" as far as whodunit goes, but as far as resolutions for the characters go, that's all up in the air. Nothing tidy to the end of the story, nothing tidy about life.Mosley brings to the story levels of class and race consciousness-- seen through his interactions with other characters and relived through his memories of his communist/anarchist father-- that you don't see in your typical PI tale. He doesn't preach at you or deliver neat, wrapped conclusions; he presents you with situations, and you're expected to look at them and draw your own ideas from them. If there seems to be a lack of analysis of class and race, it's because Mosely expects you to undertake that analysis yourself; he's not going to do the work for you. Rather, he's in the business of setting up complex situations and characters and letting you unravel the knots-- if they can even be unraveled. I appreciated the challenge and the extra dimension it added to a book from the mystery/PI genre.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a quick read-- though which propelled it along faster, the sharp dialogue or the constantly-emerging events, would be hard to say. Both were equally compelling. Leonid McGill may be a man of relatively few words, but what he says, he says well, and it cuts to the bone. Mosely keeps the pace of the book spinning rapidly along, with the web of events (fraught to begin with) growing ever more complex with each succeeding chapter-- both in terms of the mystery and in McGill's personal life. At times, I did need to slow down a bit and review what had happened up to that point to make sure I was following things completely, as the plot (in essence: there was a robbery some years back, and McGill planted evidence that implicated a woman who was innocent of that crime, though not of shooting the "man" of the title) was rather convoluted (all the better to be left guessing who the guilty party is in the end). The book ends on no easy conclusions; the mystery may be "solved" as far as whodunit goes, but as far as resolutions for the characters go, that's all up in the air. Nothing tidy to the end of the story, nothing tidy about life.Mosley brings to the story levels of class and race consciousness-- seen through his interactions with other characters and relived through his memories of his communist/anarchist father-- that you don't see in your typical PI tale. He doesn't preach at you or deliver neat, wrapped conclusions; he presents you with situations, and you're expected to look at them and draw your own ideas from them. If there seems to be a lack of analysis of class and race, it's because Mosely expects you to undertake that analysis yourself; he's not going to do the work for you. Rather, he's in the business of setting up complex situations and characters and letting you unravel the knots-- if they can even be unraveled. I appreciated the challenge and the extra dimension it added to a book from the mystery/PI genre.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Rating: 2.5* of fiveThe Book Description: In the latest and most surprising novel in the bestselling Leonid McGill series, Leonid finds himself caught between his sins of the past and an all-too-vivid present.Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed with her friend. The weekend before, $6.8 million had been stolen from Rutgers Assurance Corp., whose offices are across the street from where Zella worked. Zella didn't remember shooting Harry, but she didn't deny it either. The district attorney was inclined to call it temporary insanity-until the police found $80,000 from the Rutgers heist hidden in her storage space.For reasons of his own, Leonid McGill is convinced of Zella's innocence. But as he begins his investigation, his life begins to unravel. His wife is drinking more than she should. His oldest son has dropped out of college and moved in with an ex-prostitute. His youngest son is working for him and trying to stay within the law. And his father, whom he thought was long dead, has turned up under an alias.A gripping story of murder, greed, and retribution, All I Did Was Shoot My Man is also the poignant tale of one man's attempt to stay connected to his family.My Review: Horrible person that I am, I won this book in a LibraryThing giveaway in DECEMBER 2011 and somehow never posted a review.Probably all for the best, since I thought this book was a hot mess. Too much going on, too little attention paid to too many variables, and as a series entry it fell on its keister. The scatteredness means that the sense of building up to something that a series should have is missing.Leonid runs around and brings justice where it's overdue. In the process we meet every single person, criminal or ex-criminal, in Manhattan. Yay, and boo. Why I should know about some of these wacky ex-crims is beyond me, and because Mosley is chopping and changing the narrative so much, it's just too much for my two-volt nervous system to absorb and call it "pleasure reading."There's a line in here about success making Leonid crave a Coney Island...chili cheese dog with onions...and that, for me, sums the book up: Filling processed food-like substance for the brain, but plan on sleepin' alone because the aftereffects are noisome.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Walter Mosley's All I Did was Shoot My Man is a worthy addition to the continuing noir saga of Leonid McGill, but probably of more interest to followers of the particular series than to fans-at-large of either the genre or the author. Having made it a priority to first read The Long Fall, Known to Evil, and When the Thrill Is Gone, I'm sufficiently invested in the franchise to follow where this fourth installment goes.

    While the particular story is interesting enough, however, it's not as compelling as the author's early work, or even as his first two Leonid McGill titles. At times, it feels as if the story fragments, splinters, or dissipates -- it's still there, sure, but it doesn't hang together. Is this a consequence of Mosley's intention? Possibly, since Mosley clearly seems to be taking the character of Leonid McGill in new, atypical, exploratory directions. Could this volume have benefited from tighter editing? Almost certainly, but it would have to be a closely collaborative process with the author, to ensure that the substance and essence of this episode are preserved and consonant in the context of McGill's larger life-story.

    Most significantly, the review copy I read betrayed a disturbing number and range of apparent typos, errors, and murky passages. At a minimum, I hope the first two of these shortcomings were largely remedied in time for publication of the finished product. Still, I got enough of part 4 to be interested in part 5 when it comes.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I don't even like murder mysteries..... but this book was impossible to put down. It was the first Leonid McGill mystery I have read - now I have to backtrack and read the other ones too!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Although well-written, I found this to be a somewhat slow read and I just couldn't get "in" to the story. Not quire sure what it was about this that didn't do it for me, but I don't think I'll be reading any more in this series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Once upon a time, a young woman shot her man. And she would have walked free (or close to) if someone had not framed her for a robbery. The someone had been noone else but Leonid McGill who had cleaned up his act since (or cleaned it somewhat at least) and now when Zella is due to be released from jail, he decides to try to fix what he did last time. Of course it will not be easy - there are the missing money, people not believing in the innocence of Zella and old friends and enemies showing up from everywhere. Add a baby that need to be tracked down (Zella's - born in jail and then adopted), Leonid's interesting family (wife and 3 kids - each of them as interesting a character as any) and a shadow from the past and the story is a lot more than it looks like.Technically it is a thriller and there is enough to make it so. But if you look carefully, it is the story of a family - which tries to stay together amid hostilities and crime (a hefty doze of the crime being made by someone in the family) and about parents. And about the city - which end up an almost invisible character - invisible and yet always there. And then there is the style - it is a bit weird - quite readable when you get used to it but still quirky. I am not sure if it would have been better if I had read earlier books in the series -- the background information was in the book and for the rest reasonable guesses worked properly. But I am also sure that I missed nuances that get developed in series. On the other hand I suspect the repetition would have been too much - so maybe it is better that this is my first Leonid McGill book. No way to know unless if I read the previous books and I am planning to do exactly this.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I had always hear such good things about this series and Mr. Mosley as an author that I was very excited to read this book.Sadly, I did not like it nearly as much as I thing that I would. That surprised me. I love a good thriller, a ice bit of noir mystery. But not this time.And at the heart of not really liking it was that I really did not like the central character, Leonid McGill. Come to think of it, I was not that fond of most of the characters, and that is an issue for me when I read a book.Maybe part of the problem is that I coming in late to a series..I believe this is the 4th...but I am not sure that is the issue.Maybe it just is that McGill is often not a nice guy. It seems, from what we know, not as bad as he once was, but not someone I would want to know.Still that happens in books, even books that I like, but I just had the hardest time in this book really caring what happen to McGill and the rest.I had problems with the writing style as well, the repetition, the constant descriptions of people, too many people, who all started to sound alike.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the first Walter Mosley mystery I've read and at first I was a little put off by the throwback Hammetty noir way that Mosley writes and by the sort of insane names he gives his characters (Harry Tangelo? Are you for real?) and the stilted-seeming way the narrator describes his own family, but after a couple of chapters I stopped being bothered and learned to go along for the ride. This is an excellent detective story, and every time you think you understand what happened something else unexpected is revealed, and Mosely does a really good job of keeping the reader from feeling toyed-with at each reveal. I couldn't put this down, and I really enjoyed it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "I don't have to let you in," the doorman told me."Yeah, you do. You know it and I do too. So hop to it, whatever you're gonna do, and let us be about our business.""You should have a little respect," the doorman advised."I give what I get, brother."Leonid McGill in Walter Mosley's fourth book in this mystery series, All I Did Was Shoot My Man, is a proud man who's not going to take any mess from anybody, high to low. Like other Mosley characters (Socrates Fortlow comes to mind), he has done bad things in his life and wants to redeem himself. Once a fixer who helped cover up crimes, now he's a private eye trying to help others. In this one, his efforts to free a (relatively) innocent woman he helped send to prison trigger events he's hard-pressed to survive. Zella shot her husband when she caught him in bed with another woman (he lived), but she didn't steal the $58 million from Rutgers Corp. that she got framed for.When she's released, the dominoes start falling and people start dying, as some are anxious that their tracks not be uncovered and everyone wants to find the $58 million. This is an excellent noir mystery, with a complicated plot that reminded me of Raymond Chandler. It's the best so far in the series, and one of the best Mosley has written in his long, successful career. His characters, as usual, are compelling, including killer Hush, antagonist Captain Kitteridge, newly in love daughter Stella, son Dimitri besotted with a Slavic schemer, and high up security supervisor Antoinette Lowry, who doesn't trust black men even though she's black herself. McGill himself leads the pack. Raised in a Communist, revolutionary home, caught in a loveless marriage to a Nordic beauty who has fathered two of his three children with other men (he loves them all), he is seeking his long-disappeared father and some way to have a life with his soul mate Aura. He's also trying to be good in a life that keeps him enmeshed in his criminal past, and he doggedly keeps his eye on the prize while protecting his loved ones from the dangers that chase him. Affecting every move are the economic disparities that in his mind have superseded racism as the prime driver in modern America:"Racism is a luxury in a world where resources are scarce, where economic competition is an armed sport, in a world where even the atmosphere is plotting against you. In an arena like that racism is more a halftime entertainment, a favorite sitcom when the day is done."He's trying to keep his capable but wild son, Twill (a wonderful character) out of trouble by having him help with the investigative business. "I'd brought him into the business to keep him out of a life of crime. But he'd turned out so much like me that I had to wonder if anyone or anything, outside of death, could save him from himself." It turns out Twill is as streetwise and adept as Leonid, and he helps bring the story to a satisfying conclusion, although resolution of Leonid's personal demons will have to come in future volumes.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Leonid McGill is known to have a bad past. He has created evidence implicating people in crimes they didn't commit. He feels remorse for all his dirty dealings and has gone straight. So, he agrees to meet Zella when she gets off the prison bus and escort her to an apartment her attorney obtained for her. McGill was instrumental in implicating her in a $58 million insurance heist. Hey, she was going to jail anyway since she shot her boyfriend while he was in bed with her best girlfriend.While Leonid McGill and his family and friends are good characters, the mysteries are getting very routine. Not necessarily the plots, which in this case were a bit muddled, but the writing. Mosley describes each person the same way: color of skin, color of eyes, color and style of hair, stature. An author of his achievements could mix it up a bit.It almost feels like Mosley is getting tired of these characters. There's just not a lot of pizzazz, feeling, emotion in the book and the characters, not even when McGill talks to the father he hasn't spoken to in 40 years or the girlfriend he might get back with.I guess you could just say the series is getting lackluster.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Walter Mosley has created some memorable characters over the years, particularly Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill, and I have enjoyed following them over the years. For me, a Walter Mosley novel is as much about the personal evolution of his regular characters as it is about the crime stories that anchor them. That’s an especially lucky thing for me in the instance of Mosley’s new one, All I Did Was Shoot My Man, because while the reader learns a lot more about McGill and his family, plot development suffers a bit from what I see as over-ambition for it.That is not to say that the plot, on its face, is not an intriguing one. Leonid McGill is a complicated man, and there are some things in his past of which he is not especially proud. One of those things is his direct involvement in framing a young woman for a crime that sent her to prison and forced her to give her baby up for adoption. Now, that woman, Zella Grisham, is being released from Albion prison, and Leonid wants to help her to a good start on the rest of her life. He is at the Port Authority Bus Station to meet her when the prison bus arrives, hoping to convince Zella that he is there to look out for her best interests.Unfortunately for Zella and Leonid, others are also interested in her release – and the bulk of $58 million dollars that disappeared in the crime that sent her to prison. Leonid, himself wondering who walked away with all that money, begins to push a little too hard on some of the parties he suspects, and soon has a trail of international hit men chasing him and Zella – certainly, an interesting plot upon to write a mystery around.I was distracted from the main plot, however, by two choices that Mosley made. First, he threw so many strangely named characters into the pot (many of whom are in and out too quickly to make much of an impression on the reader) that I became confused just when everything should have started coming together in my mind. Second, too much of the “action” comes to the reader second-hand by having one character recap in conversation with another things that happened offstage – always a boring device.Those will be minor flaws to many readers, I suspect, but to me they were disappointing. Still, this is a key addition to the Leonid McGill mystery series and fans of the series will not want to miss it.Rated: 3.0
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I thought that this book was ok. Not a book that I was anxious to pick up and keep reading. Actually, I was sometimes lost with all of the different characters coming into play.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Leonid Trotsky McGill (AKA “LT,” Trot, Leonid Trotter McGill, Leonid Tolstoy McGill, Leonid Trotsky McGill) of Walter Mosley’s All I Did Was Shoot My Man is a middle-aged private detective with a shady past, shady friends, a cheating wife, a much-loved but estranged girlfriend, and three adored children. LT schemes to redeem himself for framing Zella Grisham, who is innocent of stealing $58 million from the vault of the Rutgers Assurance Corporation but not of shooting her unfaithful lover. Just released from jail, Zella is met by LT when she arrives at the Port Authority in New York. LT gives her cash and a job contact, while pretending to be merely the messenger for Zella’s lawyer. But LT doesn’t know who actually stole the $58 million, and New York City becomes scattered with assorted suspects and ne’er do well’s thought to know the money’s whereabouts. LT protects and hides Zella, solves this confusing case that resembles a “looping snake looking you in the face and attacking from below and behind at the same time,” beats up and shoots foreign assassins, and ultimately restores the stolen cash to its rightful owners.While All I Did Was Shoot My Man superficially centers on LT’s efforts to salve his conscience and recover the missing stolen loot, its most interesting and affecting themes focus on LT’s relationships with his troubled wife, his failing marriage, his favorite son Twill, his not-so-favorite “blood” son Dmitri leaving home to move in with Dmitri’s ex-hooker Byelorussian girlfriend, his teen daughter’s assignation with a married older man, and his attempts at reuniting with his long-lost revolutionary father. For those of us who are Walter Mosley fans and have read the three earlier Leonid McGill mysteries, reading All I Did Was Shoot My Man is like spending an evening with a beloved old friend. Sometimes LT loses track of his reminisces and sometimes he seems to repeat what he’s told us in earlier conversations without apparently remembering that he’s done so. But LT’s humility, decency, and huge capacity for tolerating, supporting, and loving his family and friends, flawed as they are, helps to restore our faith in our own families and friends.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The only problem I had with this book is that I was not ready for it to end when it did. All of a sudden, McGill has figured out who the bad guy is and the mystery is solved and all the lose ends wrapped up and the book is over. But this is a problem stemming from the fantastic storytelling abilities of author Walter Mosley and is actually the best kind of ending for the fourth book in a series - I can’t wait to read more! All I Did Was Shoot My Man is smart, intense, and humorous despite the odds just like its incomparable main character and leading man. If you don’t want LT in your corner by the time you finish this story, then you shouldn’t be in the ring in the first place.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My first review of this got lost in the system (grrrr….) I have read every book Mosley has written and have not been disappointed in any of them. I think one of the problems which people may have is starting in the middle of a series and having difficulty following characters and plots. Since most of his books are part of a series and not a stand-alone story it would be easy to dismiss him as difficult to understand. His writing is unique and flows effortlessly if you have kept up with characters and plot lines. If considering reading him I would suggest starting at the beginning of one of his series. The longest is the Easy Rawlins series but others include the Leonid McGill, Socrates Fortlow and Fearless Jones books.This Leonid McGill novel is a continuation of previous novels starring McGill. Mosley’s writing is consistently taut and engaging and his characters are, for the most part, well-drawn, albeit usually complex and unpredictable. I found this book a fast and very satisfying read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Walter Mosley continues his winning ways with this fast paced, hard hitting, twisted web of a mystery. If you haven't started reading Mosley, you are truly missing out on some very literate and well plotted mysteries. Leonid McGill has a problem, well, one of many. Years ago at a mobster's request, he planted evidence against a woman, Zella Grisham, that implicated her as an accomplice in a multimillion dollar robbery. She was already on the fast track to prison, having shot and wounded her husband three times after finding him in bed with another woman. Over the years, McGill has been changing his ways, regretting many of the things he had done in his dark past. After seven years in prison, Zella is released after McGill founds a way to have the robbery evidence discredited without implicating himself. McGill tries furtively to further pay his debt to Zella by finding out who really stole the corporate millions. Bodies soon start to pile up around him as someone is covering their trail. When his family is threatened McGill turns up the heat.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I've read books in Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series and enjoyed them immensely. I was therefore greatly disappointed by this book, the fourth in the Leonid McGill series. Perhaps it would have helped if I had read the previous installments, because I was instantly confused by the deluge of family, friends, foes, and miscellaneous characters. I was a quarter of the way through the book and no semblance of a plot had emerged, and I gave up.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Another great win from Library Things Early Reviewers program!! This book started out slow for me but by the 3rd chapter I was interested in learning more about Leonid McGill!Leonid is the main character in All I did was Shoot my Man. Leonid used to be a career criminal. He was best know for changing evidence in crimes to convict some people that should be convicted and some that were innocent. One of those persons is Zella Grisham. Leonid set her up as having stolen $58 million dollars from this corporation. Now that Leonid (LT) has decided to become honest he gets Zella release from prison for the stolen money. LT is also a private detective.LT also has a family, a wife and 3 grown children. One boy who works for him, his name is Twill, a daughter known as Shelly and another son called Dimitri. The characters are all very unique and interesting in their interactions with each other as family. This added to my enjoyment of the bookThe mystery is finding out who was the master mind behind this money heist and murders. LT and his family actually become targets of the culprits and are attacked in their apartment one night.The ending was surprising and leaves me wanting to read more about LT McGill!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Leonid McGill series by Walter Mosley was on my too-read list. When I won volume 4 as an Early Reviewer, I jumped at the chance to catch up on the series. Each novel stands well alone, but there is an ongoing life that builds with each volume as well.Leonid McGill is a PI with a fairly complicated life. Married, currently separated from his lover, trying to protect his 3 children even though two aren't really his, and protecting a number of other people important to him - he has a lot to keep up with. Plus he is trying to work jobs that keep him honest now that he's turned over a new leaf and attempted to leave his sordid past behind him. This time the case is his, as he is attempting to free a woman he helped frame in his prior life. But the bodies are piling up, and it appears someone is after Leonid himself. The pacing is fast and the hero is flawed but sincere. It says something about this series that I have read 4 within fairly quick succession (with a book or two in-between) and I am eager for the next one.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I have read The Fortunate Son by Mosley, but this story is written differently. This belongs to the Leonid McGill series set in New York about t an ex boxer turned detective. Leonid McGill has led a fast life by working on the fringes of the law. In this story, he aids a young woman that framed for a heist. Mosley seems very conscious of race and social status. Every character is defined by skin tone. All races intermingle with little dissention. Class structure and race structure seem obsolete. This outlook reeks of simplicity. Many parts of the narrative hint at the detective novels of the 1930's, a little like the film noir mysteries with Robert Mitchum.