Ghalen by Walter Mosley

Published by Amistad on May 26, 2026

Walter Mosley is on my laminated list of America's three best crime novelists. Ghalen isn’t a crime novel, but Mosley brings the same sense of time and place, deep characterization, and storytelling ability to this coming-of-age story. Mosley is not just one of America’s best crime novelists; he’s one of the country’s best writers.

The story begins when Jamilah Fenestra meets Robert Horton at a farmer’s market in Santa Monica. Jamilah is studying for a PhD and an M.D. Robert works in a vegan restaurant and aspires to own a restaurant that serves healing foods. Robert explains that his mother has been in the crazy house since shooting a boyfriend. Robert’s “mother wasn’t even sure of who his father was. It was between two guys named William and one named Talib.” Jamilah and Robert are obviously from different worlds, but Robert — who has no problem finding women who want to shag — is drawn to Jamilah because she makes him feel brave.

Jamilah and Robert fall in love and seem to have an ideal relationship, but Jamilah’s mother Pristine instantly dislikes Robert. Because he is slow and deliberate when he answers her questions, she describes him using the R-word.

The extent to which Robert is developmentally disabled is unclear. He thrives in a familiar routine but doesn’t cope well with anything new. He didn’t excel in school because “I can’t know something unless I see it. I have to see and touch things in order to learn ’em.”

Jamilah sees beyond Robert’s limitations. She loves him for his decency and for how he makes her feel. She admires his ability to see the world as it is rather than seeing what he wants to see. “She had accepted him for what he was before she even knew what he was.” It doesn’t hurt that Robert is exceptionally good in the sack.

The first quarter of the novel develops an unusual and exceptionally moving love story, but it is not a story that is free from pain. Unlike Jamilah, Pristine is never willing to accept Robert. After Jamilah becomes pregnant and marries Robert, Pristine announces that she wants Jamilah “out of my house, out of my life, out of my will, out of everything.”

Robert and Jamilah name their son Ghalen Romeo Horton. The rest of the novel follows Ghalen’s life through his late teens. Although Ghalen is an excellent student, he finds himself playing the role of primary caregiver for his father during much of his young life. When others disparage his father’s lack of intelligence, Ghalen retorts that he’s “smarter than most people when it comes to what’s right and what’s not right.” That might be the most important form of intelligence, one that too many "smart" people lack.

The family drama is altered by the arrival of Night Farr, Ghalen’s grandfather on his mother’s side. The family thought that Night died in the Vietnam War, but Night made a simple life for himself in Vietnam before returning to America. He stayed with a young Vietnamese woman because “it felt like the first time ever that somebody didn’t treat me like a empty bag of rice.” The importance of treating people with respect and of feeling respected is a theme in many of Mosley’s novels.

The story includes moments that will be familiar to Mosley’s fans, including a pivotal scene in which Robert sustains a head injury after being tackled by the police because he’s walking to work through a white neighborhood at three in the morning. Robert easily loses focus after his brain is injured, reinforcing Ghalen’s commitment to caring for his father.

Ghalen experiences the usual conflicts that kids endure as they grow up, although his teenage sex life might be healthier than most. He’s long had a thing for his childhood friend Lovely but gets in trouble with his childhood friend Bruno when Lovely becomes Bruno’s girlfriend. An encounter with Bruno leaves Ghalen with a brain injury of his own. The injury makes him prone to moments of darkness and a rage that he struggles to control.

Freedom is one of the novel’s strongest themes. Freedom from captivity imposed by others and by ourselves. “I guess it always seems like you’re locked in somewhere,” Ghalen says — a job or a schedule or a prison cell. When we’re locked into a relationship or responsibilities that we can’t shirk, we need to understand that we have the freedom to love and that choosing love represents freedom’s embrace, not its surrender.

Another theme is the duality of human nature. Head injuries might unlock the impulse to commit violent acts but only because the potential for violence is there to unlock. People blend good and evil in their lives. They might not recognize their own evil. Those who do may struggle to overcome it, but they are really working to overcome bad parenting, the hardships of poverty, trauma, or other forces that shaped their lives in ways they aren’t equipped to understand.

The subculture of the street is another theme that will be familiar to Mosley’s fans. As Robert explains, “when the street gets ahold’a you it just, it just twists you up inside till your heart is all strangled up with your gut.”

The harm caused by judging people we don’t know might be the story’s most powerful theme. Mosley usually illustrates that harm in the context of racial stereotypes, but Ghalen explores the evil of seeing others as “simple” — of using the R-word to describe them — despite their ability to enrich the world with their love.

The story takes a dark turn but has a hopeful ending. Like all lives, Ghalen’s might go in many directions, depending on the choices he makes. He needs to get a handle on his unpredictable impulses toward violence. But Ghalen has the support of caring friends and family (if you don’t count Pristine). He learns the importance of making his own choices, of pursuing an education on his own terms and in his own time, rather than “getting a degree that is there to make you seem like everybody else. It’s a fancy way of learning how to do what people tell you to do.” The path Ghalen will eventually choose is unclear (the novel ends before he reaches adulthood), but Mosley makes clear that children can be empowered to overcome hardship when they are raised with love.

RECOMMENDED

Storm Warning by James Byrne

Published by Minotaur Books on May 26, 2026

Storm Warning is the newest entry in the Dez Limerick series. I’m a fan. Most fictional tough guys engage in tough talk before they use their superheroic toughness to beat up or shoot their adversaries — including anyone who doesn’t adhere to their sense of proper behavior. Dez is tough, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He laughs, smiles, jokes, and has a sunny disposition. He jests with the people who want him dead. He spares lives that other tough guy thriller heroes would take. He’s driven by love and a connection to the human race rather than malice or a hatred of anyone defined as the enemy. He’s also considerably brighter than the average tough guy, but he doesn’t flaunt his intelligence. What’s not to like?

Dez is particularly talented in opening doors, a skill he acquired while training as a “gatekeeper” in the military. He’s invited to contribute his skills to a group that includes Trisha Jean Jackson, a deputy assistant secretary in the State Department, and Rusty Townsend, Trisha’s Secret Service bodyguard, as well as an FBI hostage rescue team.

The rescuers are traveling to the Fuchs Underground Neutrino Collector in a remote part of Canada. The Neutrino Collector is on the deepest level of the underground facility. Three of the top four levels are devoted to a “green” mining operation, but the miners are on strike and have gone elsewhere until the dispute is resolved. The scientists at the facility work on the top and bottom levels. They’ve been out of contact for some time, having apparently turned off their means of communication.

The authorities need Dez to help them enter the facility if the uncommunicative scientists are unable to open the door. Dez is in a casual relationship with more than one woman, including Petra Alexandris, the CEO of Triton Industries, a company that is financing the mining operation. Dez accepts the invitation when he learns that Petra is behind the closed door.

The story starts about eighteen months earlier, when Dez thwarts an assassination attempt in Paris. One of the assassins is a small woman named Ash. She’s helpless after taking a blow to the head before Dez confronts her. He disarms her but allows her to live because she’s not a threat to him. Ash understands that Dez is a killer but needs to think about his ability to choose not to kill. Maybe he can teach her something.

Posing as Elisabet LeCroix, a representative of Canada’s National Research Council, Ash joins the rescue team. She has changed her hair and is no longer covered in dust as she was when Dez saw her in Paris so he doesn’t recognize her. Why an assassin is being sent to the Neutrino Collector isn’t immediately clear to the reader.

Before leaving for the facility, a group of thugs try to bribe and then bully Dez to smuggle them onto the plane. When that plan fails, Dez is on his way to the frozen tundra in a plane carrying Trisha, Rusty, and Ash. A storm prevents the plane carrying the hostage rescue team from joining them.

Some occupants of the town in which the facility is located have been killed and the survivors believe that Russians are responsible. Dez soon discovers that not all the townspeople are who they appear to be. The organization that provided the thugs appropriates a plane and chases after Dez with the intent to kill everyone and be the first into the facility.

With that setup, Dez embarks on a typical Dez Limerick adventure. He opens doors, improvises bombs, outfights larger men, cracks jokes, screws Petra, and generally has a good time. He will, of course, eventually realize that Ash is also not who she appears to be.

The story is fun and surprising. Why have the scientists gone silent? What are the bad guys trying to acquire? Are the competing sets of bad guys pursuing the same goal? The novel delivers its biggest surprise well into the second half. Dez responds to it by saying, ““Hand t’god: That, I did not see comin’.” That makes two of us.

James Byrne makes the arctic setting seem authentic. While the action scenes are familiar, Byrne frames them in ways that make them seem fresh. The story’s pace contributes to its excitement, but Byrne takes time to develop Ash and the story’s villains in satisfactory depth. Every Dez Limerick novel has been a joy to read. Storm Warning is no exception.

RECOMMENDED

Radiant Star by Ann Leckie

Published by Orbit on May 12, 2026

Ann Leckie fries the brains of science fiction fans who refuse to grow up and understand that the genre is not frozen in the 1950s. Science fiction demands that readers open their imagination to possibilities. A small but vocal group of sf readers are particularly angry at Leckie because, in Ancillary Justice, she imagined a future in which the dominant power (the Radch empire) uses only the pronoun “she” to refer to humans. The use of female pronouns regardless of actual gender freaked out some narrow-minded readers, although they would have been fine with the universal use of male pronouns. Those readers, I suggest, need to get over themselves. As Leckie explicitly narrates near the end of Radiant Star, gender alone does not define a person. At the same time, the right of individuals to define their own gender may be central to personal autonomy.

Radiant Star is set in the same universe as, but tells a smaller story than, the Ancillary Justice trilogy. Leckie begins Radiant Star by explaining that, “though Ooioiaan boys may grow up to be any gender one may care to imagine, for the boys of the Consorority of the Translocation there are only those two options available” — and it is up to the family matriarch to choose for them. Those who seem best suited to the role become consorors (hence women) while those who grow up to be men become “servants and minor household administrators.” However, they are particularly capable servants and much in demand among the Ooioiaan. That role reversal — a society that values female over male, that relegates males to a role of servitude — is guaranteed to cheese off Leckie’s haters. Again.

Much of Radiant Star is devoted to world building. Ooioiaa is an underground city in the planet Aaa. It is also the planet’s only city. The surface of Aaa is intolerably cold, but below a sheet of ice, unusual creatures exist in Aaa’s waters. Hardy creates that will eat almost anything exist on the surface. The planet moves through space on a path that rarely brings it near a star, much less the star that its inhabitants worship. Leckie details the history of Ooioiaa, Aaa’s food production and life forms, the religion that arose in service of the Radiant Star, the various rooms in the Site of the Temporal Location of the Radiant Star, the evolution of religiuos imagery over time, the competition between sects, the hierarchy of Ooioiaa’s rulers, the elevation of saints, how the difference between “she” and “sie” affects perceptions of the person to whom the pronoun refers, and water treatment systems, among other subjects. Worlds are rarely built as completely as those that Leckie constructs.

Ooioiaa is governed by the Radchaii. For reasons that earlier novels explain, the gate that connects Aaa to other star systems has stopped functioning, cutting off communication between Governor Charak and her Radchaii masters. Since the human residents of Ooioiaa depend on the Radchaii for their food supply, they will soon experience a food shortage. The shortage is compounded by a failed experiment to grow a food called skel in Aaa’s waters. Skel is favored by the Radchaii and will sustain humans, although humans much prefer peas and pucks as well as onions. Skel fouls Ooioiaa’s water supply and leads to contamination of the few crops that can be grown on Aaa. Radiant Star eventually becomes the story of a city in crisis, a story that might be seen as illustrating the famine experienced in countries like Eritrea (or Ireland during the Great Famine), expanded to an extinction level.

The complicated story follows several characters whose lives are characterized by drama. Serque Tais would like to become a saint, a process that requires taking up permanent residence in the Site of the Temporal Location of the Radiant Star, where saints enter a state that might not be death but bears little resemblance to life. His son, Serque Iono, conspires to become Serque Removal after Serque Tais is gone, a powerful position that Tais intends to bequeath to his grandchild, Elerit (pronoun “per”).

Society frowns on Shtel, Iono’s chosen consort, because “hir appearance, accent, and manners lacked (everyone agreed) a certain polish, and were very obviously a thin veneer that could not entirely cover hir essential boorishness.” Shtel is loyal to Iono but she occupies a woeful position when Ooioiaa turns against him.

Zaved toured other star systems and came back pregnant. She had run low on money and, for a price, agreed that her son Jonr would be raised for servitude and sold to his buyer upon reaching adulthood. Thirty years later, Zaved has become a consoror and the matriarch of the Translocationists. Her plan for Jonr doesn’t work out well for either of them.

Governor Charak is no fan of saints (or humans, for that matter) but his more immediate problem is the riot that breaks out as Tais is transported to the Site of the Temporal Location. Charak does a lousy job of managing the food crisis, not to mention the life form on the planet’s surface that seems to be eating the port that serves as the main entrance to the Ooioiaa. The novel has something to say about autocratic governance and the inevitable tendency of humans to prefer making their own decisions, for better or worse.

The plot is an assemblage of small stories rather than the overarching story told in the Ancillary Justice trilogy. While there is less action than readers might expect after reading the trilogy, Radiant Star generates a satisfying amount of tension. Leckie deftly juggles the characters and their stories and, by the end, ties them into a satisfying knot. The world building might get in the story’s way at times, but Leckie’s creation of the universe in which the characters dwell would have sustained my interest even if there had been no plot at all.

RECOMMENDED

The Mediator by Robert Bailey

Published by Thomas & Mercer on May 12, 2026

When Maxine (“Max”) Ringo thinks to herself This can’t be happening, I thought, You’re right about that. Robert Bailey tells such an implausible story that I never persuaded myself to suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoying it.

The Mediator is set in Huntsville. Max is a lawyer whose law license was suspended. She’s beginning a new career as a mediator. In scenes that become tedious because of their repetition, Max beats herself up for ruining her life. She became addicted to oxy after she was in a traffic accident, then started stealing to fund her habit after her doctor cut her off, then started taking meth before her law firm fired her. After a stint in rehab, she’s earning money by mediating cases until her license is reinstated.

A judge who used to be her good friend assigns Max to mediate a divorce. The divorcing spouses are wealthy and their families are financially intertwined. The husband, Perry Strassburg, is CEO and 30% owner of Richardson Concepts. The company was founded by his father-in-law, Dagger Richardson, who also owns 30%. Perry’s wife, Stephanie Richardson, owns the remaining 40%.

Perry wants to acquire full ownership of the company for nefarious reasons. The company’s value grew substantially after Perry became CEO. Perry is willing to buy out Dagger’s interest but Dagger isn’t interested in selling. Stephanie has made clear that she won’t make a divorce settlement that her father opposes.

To obtain a favorable settlement, Perry has orchestrated Max’s appointment as mediator. He’s also kidnapped her son. He shows Max a live video of her son as he’s tied up in a barn. Max’s son is a meth addict and isn’t doing well in his withdrawal. For reasons that make no sense, Perry believes Max can force Stephanie and her father to relinquish their interest in the company. If she doesn’t, he will kill Max’s son. And he needs to gain control of the company within the next two days because a bank is threatening to call in his loans.

Perry’s scheme is nonsensical. A mediator isn’t a judge. A mediator can’t force anything to happen. And Dagger isn’t a party to the divorce so his share of the company isn’t a marital asset that the divorce court can touch. Perry’s belief that his scheme has a prayer of success is ridiculous.

That Max goes along with Perry’s scheme is just as unbelievable. She has ample time to plant a microphone, or even record Perry on her cellphone saying things like “It was nothing to me to kidnap your son, and I won’t hesitate to end his miserable life.” Perry makes multiple threats across two days. Max only needs to record one of them to get herself out of her predicament and save her son’s life. Her failure to take such an obvious step cemented my inability to buy into the plot.

Max instead turns to an old friend who introduces her to a tough guy named Satch Tonidandel. In Thrillerworld, tough guys are the answer to every problem. It takes some time for Satch to spring into action, but experienced thriller readers know that a tough guy with a military background isn’t introduced into the plot for no reason. In a trite “a mother will do anything for her son” moment, Max also turns into an action hero as the story nears its climax. Modern thrillers rarely tell a credible story, but this one is more over the top than most.

Bailey gives his characters too little personality. Max spends most of her time beating herself up for her addiction. Perry and Dagger are stereotypes of greedy businessmen. Satch is a standard aging tough guy. Max’s son is trying to decide whether he’s gay, an attempt at characterization that disappears almost immediately after it’s introduced into the plot.

Stephanie has a spreading form of cancer that is now incurable. She’s trying to decide whether to stop treatment. Scenes of women hugging and crying together ensue. Some readers will be more moved by those heavy-handed scenes than I was. Like Max’s recovery from addiction, the cancer seems like a substitute for deeper characterization, an easy way to make the reader sympathize with the characters.

Bailey repeatedly relies on clichéd phrases: “She looked like death warmed over.”  “Time to unleash hell.” Some chapters end with mini-cliffhangers, sentences like: “She peeked out her door and could barely believe her eyes.” Writers always try to manipulate readers, but they only succeed by being subtle. Such an obvious attempt to force readers to turn the page might cause some readers to think “this is a real page turner,” but many other readers are likely to resent such obvious manipulation.

The novel does have a few surprising twists at the end, so it isn’t a total loss for mystery fans. It also moves quickly, so it isn’t a tedious read. That’s such faint praise that I can’t give The Mediator a full recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Last Flight from Moscow by Andie Newton

First published by HarperCollins in Great Britain in 2026; published by One More Chapter on May 7, 2026

The Last Flight from Moscow is a flawed spy novel set in 1959. The story is narrated by Mae Pierce, a 34-year-old woman who spied for OSS during World War II. Her former partner in espionage, Sutton Maxfield, now works for the CIA.

While in the OSS, Mae was captured by the Germans. Sutton rescued her with an assist from Vera, a Russian spy. That anecdote is at the heart of the novel’s theme, which amounts to “no woman left behind.”

Sutton has long been retired. She seems to have had trouble adjusting to conventional life. She plays the numbers, relying on a supposed ability to forsee the winning numbers in advance. Her winnings are sporadic and she's deeply in debt to a criminal organization that will do her harm if she doesn't pay.

With that setup, the rest of the story follows a predictable path. Sutton recruits Mae to travel to Moscow to perform a mission, promising to pay her enough to erase her debt. The US is showcasing the American way of life by building a modern home in Moscow, complete with miracle appliances. The Americans are providing guides (actually models) to demonstrate how dutiful American wives operate fancy stoves.

The mission is to save Khruschev. The CIA has tumbled onto a scheme to assassinate him when he attends the exhibition. Sutton wants Mae and a young “girl spy,” Elaine Holiday, to pose as exhibition guides and keep an eye out for clues to the assassin’s identity. Lacking confidence in girl spies, the CIA has assigned male agents (posing as electricians and such) to do the heavy lifting. Mae and Elaine will be supervised in Russia by CIA Agent Hayden Quaid. 

Sutton asks Mae to train Elaine, although Mae provides little in the way of training as the story progresses. In fact, it wasn’t clear to me that Mae had any training of her own, apart from being told not to be photographed while spying.

In Moscow, Mae discovers that Vera is a chaperone at the exhibition. Vera was a Stalinist when they joined forces to fight the Germans but she might now be working for Khruschev or the Russian mafia. Whether Vera is still loyal to her buddies in the OSS or is now a villain should probably be a key plot point, but Andie Newton’s clumsy handling of the question robs it of any interest. Newton attempts to misdirect the reader as to both Vera's loyalty and the assassin's identity but the reveals are far from surpising. 

We know from history that Khrushchev was not assassinated, but the plot suggests that he would have been ridiculously easy to kill, but for the intervention of the CIA. The assassination plot wraps up with about a third of the novel remaining. Mae returns to the US but Elaine doesn’t.

The rest of the story involves Mae's determination not to leave Elaine behind. Mae's rescue plan depends on her haphazard ability to see numbers before they are revealed. I’m not sure that witchcraft has any place in a serious spy novel, but The Last Flight from Moscow doesn’t tell a serious story.

Mae is addicted to vodka, gambling, and sex, making her a more modern woman than the other guides, including Darla, who proudly represents Pepsi in its efforts to break into the Russian soft drink market. Like Linda Lou and Suzanne and Karen and the other American women, Darla is built on a stereotype. The women show little that might count as believable personalities.

Newton failed to convince me that the book tells a plausible story. Mae repeatedly sneaks out at night, breaking curfew and crossing boundaries into the forbidden parts of Moscow. The American embassy notices but the Russians never seem to spot her. For a seasoned spy, Mae’s tradecraft is nearly nonexistent. She has sensitive conversations with Elaine in their hotel rooms, apparently unaware that well before the 1950s, Russians began bugging hotel rooms where Americans stayed. Yet the Russians never tumble to the fact that Mae is a spy.

There are too many scenes in which Mae describes the butterflies in her stomach when she sees the “dreamy” Quaid, or imagines bedding him before she actually does. Having sex and falling in love with the wrong person is a staple of spy fiction, but dreamy men giving rise to butterflied stomachs is in a different category altogether. Infecting a spy novel with the tropes of a romance novel might be a good formula for fans of romance fiction, so you might like The Last Flight from Moscow if that’s what you’re looking for. Be prepared for dialog like “Shut up and kiss me, damn it.” I was annoyed by those scenes, although I admired Mae’s progressive (for pre-feminist times) approach to coping with horniness.

Mae spends more time obsessing about her Japanese nightgown (she loans it to another model in exchange for a favor) than she devotes to catching the assassin. There are far too many scenes of women discussing fashion, complete with detailed descriptions of hairstyles and shoes. Fashion-conscious readers who wonder what women were wearing in 1959 might be thrilled by this content. I thought it was boring filler that serves only to increase the word count.

In fact, the entire novel is too boring to qualify as a thriller. Nor does it develop the kind of intrigue I desire from a spy novel. Some readers will appreciate the novel’s message of female empowerment in pre-feminist times. To those readers, I give the novel a guarded recommendation. For other spy novel fans, there are better choices on the market.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS