Trouble Is What I Do

Trouble Is What I Do by Walter Mosley, 166 pages

Private eye and "fixer" Leonid McGill is minding his own business when he receives a blast from the past: a notorious assassin has sent a 94-year-old man to McGill to ask him to help deliver a letter to a soon-to-be-married southern belle. What seems like a simple task is soon revealed to be more complex and dangerous than McGill suspected, as the bride's white supremacist father has taken a hit out on the old African American man.

The story's a bit muddier than it needs to be, with lots of recollections breaking in and no chapters to sort them out, but this is a noir novel that handles a lot of racial issues with care and nuance. I like it more in retrospect than I did while reading it, I think.