By Shirley Hawkins
Contributing Writer
LOS ANGELES — Author Walter Mosley will make a special appearance at the Los Angeles Central Library at 7 p.m. Feb. 26 in the Mark Taper Auditorium to discuss his newest book, “Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right,” the third and latest installment in his Joe King Oliver series.
Author Paula L. Woods will serve as moderator, and live readings by a group of actors will bring to life Mosley’s latest novel and other short stories with Jason George (“Station 19”), Glynn Turman (“Rustin”), Miia Harris (“Monster High: The Movie”), and Marla Gibbs (“The Jeffersons”). The event is free and co-presented with the WORD Theatre.
“Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right” centers on private eye King’s 93-year-old grandmother, Grandma B, who has been diagnosed with a terminal tumor. Grandma B now has only a single, dying wish: to see her long-lost son, Odin, the father of King, who was imprisoned for a homicide when King was young.
Private eye King has been estranged from his father, Chief Odin Oliver, ever since he was a young boy.
Odin was sentenced to Riker’s Island and subsequently released nine years later and has disappeared underground. But now, Grandma B’s plea to track down his long, lost father has softened King’s heart, and through his hunt, he gains a deeper understanding of his father as a complicated man.
Simultaneously, a subplot of the book involves King in a moral bind.
Marigold Hart, the wife of a powerful California billionaire named Orr, has gone missing, along with their seven-year-old daughter. Orr wants King to bring his daughter and wife back, but King soon realizes that Orr is a violent sociopath who also wants revenge. Concerned, King wants to protect Hart. But he knows that if he goes against Orr’s wishes, he has signed his own death warrant.
Mosley grew up in West L.A. and graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School. He is the author of more than 60 books that cover literary, mystery and science fiction.
Many of his books have been adapted into movies and television shows, including “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” “Devil in a Blue Dress” and “Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned.”
The prolific writer divides his time between Brooklyn and Santa Monica
In 1992, then presidential candidate Bill Clinton, a fan of murder mysteries, named Mosley as one of his favorite authors.
Free tickets can be ordered on the Central Library website at https://lfla.org/event/waltermosley.
Shirley Hawkins is a freelance reporter for Wave Newspapers. She can be reached at shirleyhawkins700@gmail.com.
