Overview

Is there anyone who doesn't wonder now and again about how differently their life could have turned out? About a more interesting, more adventurous, more dangerous past they could have had? Ben Dibbuk is married to the beautiful Mona, has a lovely daughter and a well-paid job in NYC - but he's been locked in this dream for more years than he can say. But nothing can prepare Ben for his chance meeting with Star, a mysterious woman at a launch for the hip magazine Diablerie - because Star claims to share a gruesome secret that Ben just can't remember. Has Star spun a diabolical web of lies, or could it be that something terrible really did happen back in June 1979? Ben's grip on the truth begins to falter, and the line between what really happened and what might have done becomes harder and harder to negotiate Walter Mosley, creator of sometime-fixer Easy Rawlins who appeared in classic thrillers such as Devil in a Blue Dress, and recently, the shocking deliciously scandalous Killing Johnny Fry, is one of former US president Bill Clinton's favourite authors.

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'Mosley's most confrontational and disturbing novel to date' Independent on Sunday on Killing Johnny Fry 'He has gone from implying hot sex in dark places to showing it in the open with full lights blazing' Times Book Supplement on Killing Johnny Fry 'Walter Mosley is one of America's foremost crime writers' Metro

A disturbing chance encounter jolts a New York computer programmer out of his affectless routine and into the turbulent what-next zone in which Mosley's heroes from Easy Rawlins to Fearless Jones have always thrived. You don't care about nuthin'. That's what I like about you, says Cassius Copeland, security expert at Our Bank, to his virtually friendless friend Ben Dibbuk. Ever since awakening in a Bowery gutter from a Colorado drinking spree more than 20 years ago, Ben's been living the Day-Timer life, with slots for his wife, magazine editor Mona Valeria; their daughter Seela, an NYU student; and his mistress Svetlana, whom he keeps tucked away in a West Side apartment. He doesn't care much about any of them, and it doesn't bother him that he doesn't. One evening Mona drags him to a banquet to celebrate the launch of Diablerie, her new magazine. The featured speaker is Barbara Star Knowland, who's turned her ordeal as a crazed killer's hostage into a high-profile memoir. Ben knew her back in Colorado, Star insists; in fact, he's been dogging her footsteps in New York. Even before she comes out and accuses him (to Mona, to the cops, to the FBI) of killing her menacing ex-lover Sean Messier two decades ago and letting another man take the rap, Ben, who can't remember any of this, suddenly finds himself in free fall. He plays hooky from work; he spies on Mona and her lover Harvard Rollins, an ex-cop security expert who's digging into Ben's past; he reaches out to the mother he hasn't phoned for seven years; his sex life ventures into the wild side Mosley explored in Killing Johnny Fry (2007). Caroming from one mysterious exchange to the next, Ben can't imagine aiming as high as understanding his life: I just wanted to imagine a world outside my mind. Provocative, haunting, satisfyingly inconclusive work from a storyteller of formidable gifts and boundless ambition. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Walter Mosley is the bestselling author of more than twenty-five critically acclaimed books, and his work has been translated into twenty-one languages. His books include two mystery series, the Easy Rawlins series (including Devil in a Blue Dress, which was adapted into a 1995 film starring Denzel Washington) and the Fearless Jones series, as well as literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his non-fiction has been published in the New York Times Magazine and the Nation, among other magazines. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy and the PEN American Center's Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.

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