In a small town between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, a simple white-stone church sits atop a hill. It belongs to no denomination. Its priest, Father Frank, never speaks of God. The members of his congregation have broken every one of the commandments. They have gathered here to seek forgiveness.

Xavier Rule—Ecks to his friends—didn’t come to California searching for salvation. A thief and a killer on the run from the law, he expected to disappear. But under Father Frank’s strange ministry, Ecks has started to forgive himself and others for past misdeeds. Then Benol Richards walks through the door. Twenty-three years ago, she helped her lover kidnap three baby boys and sold them on the black market—she has carried the guilt with her ever since. Now she wants to know what became of the children, and Father Frank gives Ecks the job of finding out.

Crooks make the best detectives. They know how the guilty think and where the guilty hide. But if Ecks is to pick up this trail and follow where it leads, he will have to fight his old, lethal instincts—and know when justice demands he give in to them.

Praise for Walter Mosley:

“A master of craft and narrative . . . Mosley’s talent and memorable characters have captivated readers everywhere.”—National Book Foundation

“Mosley has more than earned his reputation as the ultimate craftsman—his language is precise, evocative, and poetic, and his stories challenge and satisfy in equal measure.”—CrimeReads

“One of contemporary literature’s pre-eminent crime novelists . . . an inveterate investigator and chronicler of his own heart, mind and soul.”—New York Times

“When reviewing a book by Walter Mosley, it’s hard not to simply quote all the great lines. There are so many of them. You want to share the pleasures of Mosley’s jazz-inflected dialogue and the moody, descriptive passages reminiscent of Raymond Chandler at his best.”—Washington Post

“With Mosley, there’s always the surprise factor—a cutting image or a bracing line of dialogue.”—New York Times Book Review

“Like being shown a path in the darkness. It spoke to me as a writer, as a Southerner and as a Black person . . . it gave me ‘permission’ to write about the people I love.”—S.A. Cosby, on Devil in a Blue Dress

“[Mosley] has a special talent for touching upon these sticky questions of evil and responsibility without getting stuck in them.”—New Yorker

“An astounding performance by a master.”—Junot Díaz, on The Long Fall

“A portal to Los Angeles streets and their vastly different worlds, communities born of disadvantage, and mysteries that highlight universal truths.”—Booklist (starred review), on Gray Dawn

“By now, it’s tempting to take Mosley’s inimitable blend of taut lyricism and evocative landscapes for granted. Don’t.”—Kirkus Reviews, on Gray Dawn

“The prolific Mosley delights in the wonderfully bizarre . . . He unfurls into greater and frankly breathtaking complexity.”—New York Times, on The Awkward Black Man

“[Near] the recent work of Julian Barnes and Roddy Doyle.”—Wall Street Journal, on The Awkward Black Man

“We see [Mosley] as a chronicler of Black life in America.”—Washington Post, on The Awkward Black Man

“Tinged with sardonic humor and acerbic observations, many echoing the pained, bristling voices of Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin.”—New Yorker, on The Awkward Black Man