Diablerie

Starred review from October 15, 2007
In this short, intense roman dur
(or “serious novel”), Mosley probes the human condition through Ben Dibbuk, a black man whose name evokes the dybbuk of Jewish folklore. A 47-year-old computer programmer for a New York City bank, Dibbuk is married to Mona, the editor of a new cutting-edge magazine, Diablerie
, which “can mean either mischievous or evil.” He has a daughter at NYU and a 21-year-old Russian mistress whose apartment and graduate school tuition he pays for. Then a woman he doesn’t remember threatens to shatter the shell Dibbuk has built to protect himself from his troubled, alcoholic past. When Dibbuk discovers Mona is having him investigated, he realizes he risks being charged for a murder he can’t remember but may have committed. As Dibbuk struggles to escape the emotional vacuum of his life, he may not be free to enjoy his reawakening. This is Mosley at his deepest and best, scratching away the faces we wear to reveal the person behind the masks.

November 1, 2007
Mosley is a true original. With 29 books since 1990, however, its fair to ask whether hes diluting his talents. Is he a renaissance man or a dabbler? His last nonEasy Rawlins novel (and one of three books he published in 2007) was the sexistential Killing Johnny Fry. As advertised, the protagonists journey was explicitly sexual. Though Diablerie doesnt carry the same tagline, it weds Mosleys continuing midcareer carnality to a noir story line: Ben Dibbuk is an emotionally detached computer nerd with a humdrum routine until his wife drags him to a launch party for a crime magazine called Diablerie. There he meets a woman who says she knows him and who drags him headlong into his debauched but forgotten past, where he may or may not have committed murder. Mosleys clipped prose is becoming more idiosyncratic, and his story lines are, too: Dibbuks tale is a strange mix of psychology, criminology, and sexuality. Where in earlier novels Mosley championed stalwart, nurturing men (while giving them violent alter egos), lately he writes about men who yearn to dominate women sexually and whose primal instincts must be honored. Will Mosleys many fans follow him in this new direction? One suspects that some may dust off their copies of his debut, Devil in a Blue Dress, and start over from there. Still, give him credit for continuing to take chances and confound expectations.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)

April 28, 2008
A taut and suspenseful thriller that follows Ben Dibbuk as he unravels a mysterious plot against him initiated by his own wife, Mosley's latest effort is captivating. Richard Allen's reading, however, is not quite suitable—not because he isn't clear or doesn't reads well, but because his deep and rich tone that sounds almost classically trained doesn't suit the common, everyman character of Dibbuk. Allen's narration creates a disconnect from the story, and he fails to capture the essence of this thrilling tale with characters whose voices only vaguely resemble those of Mosley's text. Though there is an underlying tension created at the very onset of the story, Allen is simply not the right choice for this particular reading. Simultaneous release with the Bloomsbury hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 15).