Walter Mosley is one of my favorite storytellers in any genre—I’m excited when any new title of his appears. Known to Evil only partly rewarded my eager anticipation. It follows up on The Long Fall, a noir novel that introduced Leonid McGill, a New York City-based criminal operative extraordinaire (a fixer-for-hire who frames the innocent and provides alibis for the guilty) who has gone straight. McGill is trying to function on the sunnier side of the boundary between good and evil (but not always on the sunny side of the boundary between legal and illegal). He’s haunted by harm that he’s caused others in the past and tries in the present to repair whatever damage he can.

This time a highly placed shadowy associate of the mayor hires McGill, for reasons that are unclear, to find and surreptitiously keep an eye on a young woman. Meanwhile, a hired gunman murders the woman’s close friend. The gunman, in turn, is simultaneously killed by someone else, who has fled the scene. Meanwhile the young lady McGill is seeking, who cannot be found, is herself the target of shady individuals.

On the plus side, McGill is a complex and intriguing figure who relies on his wits and emotional intelligence to get innocent people to trust and him and to thwart the bad guys. He also utilizes the strength, endurance and self-confidence that he has developed over years of training at Gordo’s gym. At the core is anger-fueled energy that threatens to boil over at various points. The story offers many twists and turns. Mostly on the plus side, McGill’s determination to atone for past wrongs adds to his emotional burden and creates plot complications.

On the minus side, while entertaining, the book didn’t seem to break any new ground beyond what was explored in The Long Fall. McGill has the same tzuris-filled family life. Some of the characters are familiar types from Mosley’s earlier books: his buddy the assassin, his buddy the electronics whiz, a cruel and mendacious cop, a straight arrow cop; McGill’s ingenuity at giving the cops what they are looking for. Also, despite the complexity of McGill’s character, there’s a certain simplistic and cardboard comic book quality to the plot (e.g., why the young woman is pursued), in Mosley’s depiction of the bad guys, and in McGill’s reliance on advanced electronics wizardry to gain information