Socrates Fortlow begins this collection (14 tales that work as fully-realised pieces in their own right and as a loose, episodic whole) with a whole deck marked against him:
That woman died by the same hand Lula stroked. She died and hadn’t done a thing to deserve a bruise. He had killed her and was a little sorrier every day; every day for 35 years.

27 of Fortlow’s 58 years have passed in gaol for rape and double murder. Cowed by a collective past and his own capacity for violence, living as quietly as life will allow a black man in downtown Los Angeles, he has sworn never to hurt another human being. Leastways, not ’less they ask for it. Like his namesake, he wants to understand the world and maybe even make it a little better. He battles to save a young boy from a trajectory that looks all set to parallel his own. He attempts to make an honest living but finds institutionalised racism strewn across his path.

The language is earthy and direct, but not without lyricism. These are essentially parables, but without the piety that might suggest. The messages are simple, but simplicity is so often the point of Mosley’s work: complexity is cumulative. Thus characters are allowed to say:
‘You stood up for yourself... That’s all a black man could do. You always outnumbered you always outgunned’,
and we don’t find ourselves gagging on political double-speak. This is how Mosley affects us, and why we never forget.