By Walter Mosley
320 pages; Riverhead

The new man in your life: Leonid McGill, a private investigator and former boxer graced with the rueful wisdom that can come from relentless pummeling—inside a ring and out. In The Long Fall, Walter Mosley introduces this sometime sinner beset by midlife regrets and terrors who, in going "from crooked to only slightly bent," still has to deal with punks and predators. The novel's deepest mystery, embodied by McGill's unfaithful wife and sweetly criminal stepson: how to keep faith with others and yourself. — Cathleen Medwick