When the Thrill Is Gone
Written by Walter Mosley
Narrated by Mirron Willis
4/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Leonid McGill is back, in the third-and most enthralling and ambitious-installment in Walter Mosley's latest New York Times- bestselling series.
The economy has hit the private-investigator business hard, even for the detective designated as "a more than worthy successor to Philip Marlowe" (The Boston Globe) and "the perfect heir to Easy Rawlins" (Toronto Globe and Mail). Lately, Leonid McGill is getting job offers only from the criminals he's worked so hard to leave behind. Meanwhile, his life grows ever more complicated: his favorite stepson, Twill, drops out of school for mysteriously lucrative pursuits; his best friend, Gordo, is diagnosed with cancer and is living on Leonid's couch; his wife takes a new lover, infuriating the old one and endangering the McGill family; and Leonid's girlfriend, Aura, is back but intent on some serious conversations...
So how can he say no to the beautiful young woman who walks into his office with a stack of cash? She's an artist, she tells him, who's escaped from poverty via marriage to a rich collector who keeps her on a stipend. But she says she fears for her life, and needs Leonid's help. Though Leonid knows better than to believe every word, this isn't a job he can afford to turn away, even as he senses that-if his family's misadventures don't kill him first-sorting out the woman's crooked tale will bring him straight to death's door.
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 When the Thrill Is Gone
101 ratings26 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the third entry in Mosley's Leonid McGill series. McGill is a PI with lots of connections in the deep underworld; people owe him favors, but other people would be happy to see him gone, and the police are always looking for a reason to roust him, or better yet, put him away for good. He's smart, he's cool (mostly), and he's determined to stay out of jail, and on the righteous path as he sees it. He is also trying very hard to save his youngest child from the mistakes of his own youth, but the boy is scary smart and scared of nothing. I'd hate to live in McGill's world, but if I ever found myself there I would certainly want him looking out for me. Good gritty noir.
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- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is the second book in the Leonid McGill series that I have read. I enjoy reading about the character – – he's in his mid-50s and despite being about five and a half inches tall, a real bad ass. I enjoy McGill's reveries about life as I do Robert Parker's Spencer character's quips and insults. McGill knows his way around New York and around the harassments and issues with the New York City Police Department. I will continue to read further books in the series.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I enjoyed this, as I enjoyed the first book featuring Leonid McGill, The Long Fall. The boxing analogies and metaphors were a little heavy-handed (so to speak) but Leonid's patchwork family and cast of crusty friends make for an entertaining adventure. In this episode, Leonid is hired by a woman claiming that her billionaire husband is trying to kill her - though it turns out she is not who she seems, and neither is her husband.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the third book by Mosley featuring Leonid McGill, but I have not yet read the first two. I was able to get along quite well though, without the full history of the characters. There were references to past significant events, which were obviously the major plot of earlier books, but the details of those stories were not needed to enjoy this book. There was one major plot line in this book, with other things going on that will carry through to future books. McGill gets a new client, a woman identifying herself as the wife of a billionaire, whose first two wives died under mysterious circumstances. She tells him that her husband murdered the first two wives and now she feels in danger because he is having an affair. After she leaves his office, he looks into her story and quickly discovers that she is not who she claimed to be. He works on the case anyway, and this story thread plays out nicely.Along the way, he is also asked by an old friend of his father to locate a missing person. He agrees to do this as a favor, and this thread is not fully resolved by the book's end. His relationships with family members and friends also takes up a large part of the book. These will obviously continue. I enjoyed the book overall and will probably catch up with the first two books and read any new ones. This was a quick, easy read, hard to put down.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I have not read any of Walter Mosley's books for several years. I was a big fan of Easy Rawlins and went to several signings just to meet Mr. Mosley, But for some reason and I can not say why I became disenchanted with his writing. Then Early Reviews decided I needed to read him again. Because they sent me the book I decided to read read it and because I felt a promise to write a review, I am doing this. What a surprise that I found the book easy to read and really enjoyed the characters and the story. The pace was great and I just wanted to keep reading. It was like reading "Devil in a Blue Dress". The style was fresh and exciting. Thanks for bringing me back to his writing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book was received from LibraryThing through their Early Reviewers program.This is my fourth book of Walter Mosley and I am well acquainted with P.I. Leonid McGill and his family.The story begins with a woman Chrystal Tyler arriving at his office and who pays Leonid a pretty sum to find out if her husband, Cyril Tyler is having an affair and maybe wants her out of the picture like his first two wives.Sounds like a simple case…but the woman is not Chrystal but her sister Shawna. So begins the journey of solving a murder, taking on the responsibility of a dying mentor, finding the real Chrystal, providing shelter for five children, straightening out his budding criminal son, saving another son from danger and coping with a cheating wife.Walter Mosley writes a narrative with characters that are so well developed that you can immerse yourself in all the different scenarios and have no difficulty following these complex and ever changing situations. You are compelled to keep reading to find out if Leonid can solve everyone’s problems.Just like in life, some issues turn out great and others cannot be rectified. Leonid always tries to do his best.I for one definitely want to read more from Walter Mosley about P.I. Leonid McGill.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was my first time reading a novel by Walter Mosley and I enjoyed meeting his character P.I. Leonid McGill. Leonid is a very complicated man with a very complex life which he manages with verve and panache. He juggles the myriad challenges in is his professional and private lives demonstrating raw human nature. I enjoyed all of the events and situations that were happening in the book ( they were sometimes a bit hard to keep track of but necessary to the development of the book) and found that the action, mystery and suspense moved along very well and the characters were well developed. This one is well worth reading!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was a very interesting book. I had not read any Walter Mosley books prior to receiving this as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer. I thought it was very well written and extraordinary character development. I am used to thrillers that move at a very fast pace, sometimes fast enough to almost leave me breathless. This book was a bit more introspective. In addition to great characterization Mosely turns quite the descriptive phrase.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leonid McGill is paid a healthy sum by Chrystal Tyler who is afraid of becoming her husband’s third wife to die. Cyril Tyler is a wealthy man whom his wife believes is having an affair. Things are never easy for Leonid. He soon discovers that Chrystal is an imposter. She looks like her picture but not quite. What’s worse, when he meets Cyril, he isn’t the real deal either. Chrystal’s sister, Shawna, is the one who has been impersonating her sister, but when she turns up dead, suspicion turns to Cyril. Leonid is a P.I. with a lot of balls in the air so it made it difficult to follow. He has a wife who is having an affair, a girlfriend, a dying friend who is living with him, a son who is up to no good, another son off in Europe with a girlfriend who is trouble with a capital T, and five of Shawna’s kids who are now homeless but Leonid doesn’t know where to find Chrystal. As if that wasn’t enough, a shady character who knew Leonid’s Communist father wants him to track someone down for him. A lot of characters have one paragraph walk-ons, making me wonder if they were introduced in the previous book which left this reader in the dark. Perhaps dished out in one serving I might have been able to keep track of everyone but I was unable to read it in one day. Leonid is a bit of a shady character himself but he has a heart of gold which makes him quite likeable.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Life can get complicated for an ex-boxer with a murky past, a violent temper, and dangerous friends but Leonid McGill is used to complicated. His P.I. business has been slow and his personal life is a mess. His best friend and mentor is dying in his spare bedroom. His wife is cheating on him and his girlfriend isn't returning his calls. To make matters worse, one of his sons has run off to Paris chasing a girl who's nothing but trouble and the other son, his favorite, is running straight into the arms of the law. When a beautiful woman with a stack of cash, a hard-luck story, and a smile walks into his office Leonid should have seen trouble coming from a mile away but he just can't help playing the sap. It is a good thing Leonid McGill can turn almost any situation to his advantage. And it is a very good thing that Walter Mosley can turn any tough guy in to a touching hero. The two of them make for a wonderfully deadly combination. - Recommended
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leon McGill returns in this latest offering from Walter Mosley to find himself in a case where nothing is what it seems, including his client. When Chrystal Tyler shows up in McGill's office, claiming to be afraid that her billionaire husband may be about to kill her, Leonid is intrigued by her story, and the pile of cash Chrystal places on his desk. Two previous wives are dead, and Chrystal is convinced that they died simply because her husband willed it to be. An agreement is struck, and McGill begins to investigate, knowing that any previous means of death is almost certainly much more mundane - and human - than described. But investigating a man with such power isn't easy, and McGill finds one roadblock after another. When it turns out that even his client isn't what she purported to be, he faces a tangled, twisted path, beset by danger, and even some personal revelation.Leonid McGill is a colorful, likable, even admirable character, who has the ability to see through the charades most of us live, right into the core. His checkered background and past transgressions, while forever shaping his identity, also have lent him w kind of street-level wisdom that is, in many ways, profound. I was impressed by him. You may be, too.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I Loved this book !! THANK YOU to librarything.com and Riverhead Books. This was my first Walter Mosley book but defiantly not my last. I’m looking forward to learning all about Leonid McGill, a very tough ex-boxer and Private Investigator with a nice sensitive side.I loved the Prose:“the net-because it made me a fisherman on the shores of some great electronic sea” And “dreams are like oceans-if there worth a dam they’re bigger than the dreamer and sometimes when the one dreaming wants to be as big as they imagine, the wave pulls em down”This book has twist and turns throughout and keeps you reading right up to the very end.I loved this book and would highly recommend it. Cannot wait to read the first two in this series.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I haven’t read Walter Mosley in many years and Leonid Trotter McGill, the tough PI with the evil past, was new to me. His relationship to the others inhabiting his world had me confused at first, but then I caught onto most of the dynamics and can’t wait to go back and read the first two books to see how they all got where they are. I loved Mosley’s writing style, his way of describing each scene… I could see the broad, bright-green suburban lawn leading up to the over-sized ranch-style house as LT stepped onto the roof of a 19 story building in New York, and his way of making me ‘see’ the people that McGill has dealings with is amazing. The end was a surprise to me, that when I thought back on it had been there building as a side story all along. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone looking to add a new detective to their bookshelf.I was lucky enough to win a copy of this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Thank You LibraryThing and Riverhead Books!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just got finished with this fun new Walter Mosley book. Leonid Mcgill is back in his 3rd book and once again it is a fun, twisting, modern noir. If you like Mosley, Noir fiction, NYC, mysteries or tough guys you'll like this book. Even if you haven't read the two previous books in this series you'll be able to get into it and will enjoy another fine read from Walter Mosley.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I first encountered Walter Mosley when he gave a lecture for the Smithsonian's Mystery Writer Lecture Series in the early 80's. In preparation for that I read Devil in a Blue Dress. That reading, and the live interview with him, have led me to read every book he has written. His style is so unique. I've never come across any other writer who can use language in such a literate, coarse, and descriptive way. It defies my attempt to describe.This book is another step along his path of getting better with every book he writes. The ending, in particular, was unexpected but very rewarding for those who have read the previous Leonid McGill novels.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5P.I. Leonid McGill takes on the case of a beautiful woman and artist who hands him a bundle of cash, saying she is afraid someone is trying to kill her. Soon he finds out she is not who she says she is and yet she still may have been murdered. He also takes on the case of locating a William Williams that no one has seen in over twenty years. Enough to keep him bust, there is still his private life having to deal with his stepson who has disappeared, his wife and girlfriend and his best friend. So much going on, yet Mosley gives an entertaining and mysterious tale that is colorful and descriptive. This is another one of those novels that I am glad to have been introduced to or otherwise would have missed. Mosley is a master of his craft.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Walter Mosley is Walter Mosley. That's about all one can say. His books are readable. His characters are interesting, introspective, fun, funny, odd, etc.Someone who identifies herself as Chrystal comes to Leonid McGill afraid that her husband is going to do her harm. The fact that his two previous wives were killed under uncertain circumstances makes this fear easy to understand.At the same time, Leonid's deceased father's best friend, Vartan Harris, a notorious mobster, acts a personal favor of Leonid: find William Williams.These two pursuits lead McGill far afield and those he recruits for his cases are the usual suspects. It's kinda like old home week for those who have read the previous Leonid McGill books. McGill is a softy at heart, saving some children and a hooker from a painful future, taking care of Gordo his best friend and father figure, saving his sons Twill and Dmitri from foolish acts.Not high literature, Walter Mosley is an easy, fun read. I happen to like his Fearless Jones series the best.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Noir is my favorite genre in film so I am a big fan of Mr. Mosley. I am partial to Easy Rawlins having started out with him, but Leonid is growing on me. The dialogue gets better with each book if that’s possible.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I just read When the Thrill is Gone - good stuff When the Thrill is Gone is the first Walter Mosley book I have read in a long time and I have only read a few of the thirty plus others. This book was great though I wish I had read the other two Leonid McGill mysteries first. Not that it isn’t a stand alone story just that I like to start at the beginning and get all the back-story I can. I won’t get into the story except to say that if you are a fan of the noir genre, mysteries, or NYC you will like this book. I don’t think I put it down from the time I started it to its finish. Mosley’s language and descriptions are wonderful, within the first few paragraphs I wanted to take up boxing.Now I need to go to the very next store and pick up the first two in the series.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This story is about an ex-boxer, Leonid McGill and his life and PI practice. A woman comes to him asking him to find her sister. She is afraid her sister's husband is going to kill the sister. The story evolves from there adding many new characters, Leonid's wife, step-children, friends, old contacts and suspects in the case. I thought the storyline flipped around quite often. I had to stop and remind myself who a character was and how they fit into the story. Leonid turns out to be a smart, cool cookie who can definitely handle himself in most any situation. This book wasn't too bad, although I probably would not recommend it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is my first Walter Mosley book but it will not be my last.Checking the list of his past books(I do this with ever author I'm lucky to get advance copy of there book)discovered his first book...DEVIL IN THE BLUE DRESS...was made into a movie.Have not read the book,but the movie I have seen several times,last being just week or two ago.Leonid McGill is someone I would like to call friend,reminds me of Raymond Chandler's character Philip Marlowe or Dashiell Hammett's charactersNick and Nora Charles,,,(without Nora).THANK YOU again Library Thing for introducing me to a author that i might have missed...
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mosley has a great handle on his descriptions. I'm a visual reader and his story landscape is rich with vision! His analogies are creative and original and give an instant impression of his meaning. The principle character, McGill is an aging boxer with grown children who are stretching family bonds (growing up) and testing the influences of their father. This reformed criminal, ex-boxer, brilliant detective, lover and ticket to a Black perspective on the dark side of life in New York is a real adventure for the pale library user. McGill gives lessons in loyalty to friends, family and fellow human beings and displays real love for children and the powerless. Much of his efforts and fortune is spent easing the trials of people in his association. His friendships are the real tools that allow him to be effective as a detective. The story has many twists and turns and it is difficult to think ahead into the story. If you are like me, you'll jump on a clue that takes you in an entirely different direction that the next twist of the story. The story lasts until the last page and then wraps it up cleanly in a satisfying fashion. Good results for children, friends, clients and even the ever suffering police detective. It is as good as any of the other Mosley stories I've read and I've purged my local libraries to insure an exposure to his works. I highly recommend to anyone who likes intelligent, dark sided, non-conventional detective stories!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I don’t even like noir mysteries. But Mosley is such a darn good writer I can’t resist his books anyway. McGill has some clients who get him into near-death scrapes, but the real emphasis in this book is on fathers and sons – McGill and his Communist father, and McGill and his stepsons. And it’s about a man, who at the age of fifty, finally figures out what he wants to do with his life.Mosley’s reputation as a literary artist who happens to write mysteries is substantiated in this book by little flights of transcendent prose such as this, when McGill is thinking about how good it is to be on his own at three in the afternoon…"…when most other workers are sitting in cubicles, dreaming of retirement, praying for Saturday, or finding themselves crammed-in down underground on subway cars, hurtling toward destinations they never bargained for.” Or this, when he was watching a woman cook breakfast for him:"‘What?’ she asked when I smiled at my flittery, yellow butterfly of a heart.”Or the words from a witness, that inadvertently cause McGill to have an epiphany about what drove his father:"I gave my children the kind of dreams they could live by, but dreams are like oceans, Mr. McGill. If they’re worth a damn they’re bigger than the dreamer, and sometimes, when the one dreaming wants to be as big as what they imagine, the wave pulls ‘em down.”In this book, the meditations of the protagonist are mostly turned inward rather than focusing on the world outside himself, so it is a bit more melancholy than Mosley’s usual fare, but this introspection also lends more literary notes to the story.Evaluation: When the Thrill is Gone is the third book in the Leonid McGill detective series, but can be read as a standalone book. If you like noir mysteries, you will like this solid contribution to that genre. If you appreciate lyric prose, you will like this book even if you don’t like noir mysteries. Walter Mosley is an author who can and should be savored on a number of levels.Rating: 4/5
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The last thing I need is another mystery writer whose series I want to read, but dang it, I've gone and done it again, found an author whose writing I thoroughly enjoy. When the Thrill is Gone was my first book by this author even though it is the third in his series about PI Leonid McGill. Now I have to go back and read the first two, and maybe other novels by Mosley.Leonid is a hard-boiled detective, not always right with the law. Okay, almost never right with the law. And he used to be even worse – I've gotta find out those details. Anyway, a very rich woman comes to him because she thinks her husband is going to kill her; two former wives are now dead and he is behaving oddly. But...the woman's dress and demeanor don't quite seem right for her wealth. So what is really going on?The book is heavy on the testosterone, lots of tough guys doing tough things, but the violence isn't overly gruesome. The characters are interesting and the plot has enough turns to keep me interested. The characters aren't black and white, but all shades of good and bad. McGill's relationship with his wife is especially interesting. For me, the book had just the right amount of description. In describing the characters, Mosley usually described their skin color, no two being alike. “Her color was that of maple syrup in a glass jar, but in shadow.” I loved that. All in all, a great read for the genre.I was given an uncorrected proof of the book by the publisher, very much appreciated.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I was fortunate to receive a free copy of this book from Early Reviewers at Librarything.com, but, I would gladly have gone out and purchased this one for my library.Excellent! Leonid is a private investigator hired by a woman who fears her husband may be plotting to kill her, but in this intricately woven story, nothing is as it seems. Complicating matters even further are Leonid's own family problems--a wife who has taken other lovers, one son who has fallen for the wrong type of woman, and another son who seems to have fallen on the wrong side of the law.Walter Mosley proves once again that he is a master at his craft with rich dialogue, real characters, and a flow to the story that sweeps the reader along effortlessly. LOVED THIS BOOK!Add this to your "MUST READ" list!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When Winston Churchill spoke of, "a riddle wrapped in a puzzle wrapped in an enigma", he might well have been describing Walter Mosley's fictional detective, Leonid McGill. Everyone keeps secrets from him. Everyone tells him lies or half truths. His dad quoted him communist manifesto instead of reading him bedtime stories in the relatively few years he was around. He was last seen just before leaving his wife and young Leonid, to go fight in some South American revolution. Leonid knows his wife is seeing another man, but it seems to be improving her self image. Her attitude towards Leonid and her kids is getting better. At the office where McGill trys to run his detective business in a down economy, his clients are few and far between. So when a beautiful woman comes in telling him that she needs protection from her husband who may be out to kill her, he takes it with a grain of salt and a hand full of cash. His initial investigation reveals she is not who she said she was. Leonid, however, has to rethink everything when her body turns up colder than the cash she gave him. Riddles, puzzles, enigmas. You need to be open to all the clues if you want to stay on top of this one. Be prepared, the more Walter Mosley you read, the more you will want to read. This book provided for review by the well read folks at Shelf Awareness and Riverhead Books