Every Man a King by Walter Mosley
Every Man a King is the title of a radio address delivered in 1934 by Senator Huey Long of Louisiana. In the speech, Senator Long railed against the concentration of wealth in a few hands and highlighted the problems of the poor in his own state. He declared: “Every man a king, so there would be no such thing as a man or woman who did not have the necessities of life, who would not be dependent upon the whims and caprices and ipse dixit of the financial martyrs for a living.” Once an FDR supporter, Senator Long became one of his most strident critics, arguing that the New Deal was not aggressive enough in addressing the issue of economic equity. In 1934, the Senator began to build a national movement (Share Our Wealth Society) with “Every Man a King” as its motto to help him run for the presidency in his own right in 1936.
Senator Long’s speech addressed issues of race, poverty, wealth, and class, themes present in Walter Mosley’s new hard-boiled story of billionaires, white nationalists, and a detective with a complicated past. The narrative is told by Joe King Oliver, an ex-cop turned private detective in New York. As the novel begins, he is driving uptown to meet a client at a palatial estate overlooking the Hudson River. The client is Roger Ferris, the boyfriend of Joe’s grandmother, Brenda.
As I read these first few pages, I remain convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Walter Mosley is still at the top of his game in setting a scene. Here is his precise description of his grandmother, her beau Roger Ferris, and Ferris’s grand manor compared to his ascetic den.
Brenda was ninety-three, sharp as a whip, and black as a moonless night on an ancient sea. She met Roger at Stonemason’s Rest Home and they quickly became three-quarters of an item.
It was an unexpected coupling. Roger had been rich since the moment of his conception, whereas Brenda was born of sharecroppers, who were, in turn, born from three centuries of enslavement. [p. 4]
Joe drives his tiny cream-colored Bianchina to the “sprawling estate overlooking the West Side Highway and the Hudson” where Ferris and his grandmother now reside. Once security allows him inside, he is greeted by his grandmother and Roger Ferris who ushers him into his den.
Considering the lavishness of the manor, Roger’s den was an anomaly, as it was small and unadorned. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all somewhere around eighteen feet in width and length. The floor was sealed pine, and the desk pressboard lined with lime-colored linoleum. Slatted folding chairs were the only seats. There wasn’t even a window.
He went to stand behind the zombie desk.
“You don’t have a bookcase?” I asked, lowering into my seat.
“This is the room I do business in,” he said. “No comfort, no distractions.”
Roger was six feet tall and weighed maybe forty pounds more than my grandmother. He sat, exhibiting both gravity and elegance. He took out a pair of glasses with semitransparent red frames and donned them. Staring at me through those lenses, he was reminiscent of a predatory bird from thousands of years before humans dominated the Americas. [pp. 9-10]
It’s been five years since I hung out with Joe King Oliver as I read the Edgar Award winning Down the River Unto the Sea. He is still a thoughtful hero who takes on more than he should, who is both complicated and credible. Mr. Mosley states in “Walter Mosley discusses Every Man A King”:
“Anybody who knows Joe King Oliver knows that he was a cop and he wasn’t necessarily a good guy but he was a very good cop and he was a very honest cop. He was actually too honest so in the first novel of this series, Down the River Unto the Sea his colleagues turned against him and sent him to Riker’s Island. His wife left him, and the only person left in his life is a hit man and his daughter Aja Denise who adores him.”
The plot of Every Man A King continues with Roger Ferris asking Joe to investigate what appears to be a government kidnapping. His mission, should he accept it from Roger, is to find out why a man named Alfred Xavier Quiller has been detained by “an as-yet-unidentified branch of the government” and placed in a private cell on Rikers Island. Mr. Quiller is a noted inventor, a “natural-born genius,” and a manifesto-penning icon of white nationalism.” Jillionaire Roger claims to abhor Mr. Quiller’s politics, but, he intones, “the betrayal of our civil rights is a crime worse than any he’s being held for.” [p. 10]
And there it is, the gray area from which Mr. Mosley’s haunting characters emerge. Joe accepts the case, and his own experience of wrongful incarceration forms a psychic bond between him and the racist ideologue he’s been employed to rescue. This deeply worries Joe’s beloved daughter, Aja Denise, whose principles flail against her dad’s world-weary pragmatism. Mr. Mosley’s gift for creating compelling dialogue is showcased in this scene where Joe and Aja discuss his investigation of those who have incarcerated Mr. Quiller.
She was wearing a floral dress of blues and reds with a white background and a choke chain comprised of deep red beads, each carved into the form of a rose. The hem of the dress flared out at the knee. All that beauty, and yet she strode in like a prosecuting attorney ready to seek the death penalty.
She took a chair before the desk and I gave a smile that had not the slightest hope.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Quiller is a killer,” she rhymed. “Maybe he hasn’t shot anybody, but his words are deadlier than a fully loaded assault rifle.”
“Are we forgetting the freedom of speech?”
“He’s still a killer.”
“So am I.” That was the first time I made such a confession to my daughter. She knew, of course, that I often went armed in the world. She even knew that I’d been in gun battles where people had died. But I’d never been so blasé as to admit my culpability with a shrug.
A.D. looked as if she wanted to spit on the ground at my feet.
“He’s a murderer,” she said.
“You have, I suppose, heard of the burden of proof?” If she was going to prosecute, I was going to show that I could lawyer too.
“How can you sit there and defend him like that? He spews poison in his books and on TV appearances and, and, and he shits on our rights.” [pp. 37-38]
When Aja-Denise castigates Joe for taking on Quiller’s case, he is at once pained by his daughter’s judgment and proud of her principles. “If someone had asked me at that moment to explain my emotional state,” Joe says, “I would have said, Everything good and everything bad that makes me human. [p. 40]
Mr. Mosley said in his 1994 NYTimes interview that his propensity for storytelling came from both his parents and their family traditions. “One of the things about the black experience is that we have an incredibly rich oral history and great stories that are begging to be told,” he said. “I’m writing them down.” Mr. Mosley spent his early years in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles the only child of a black father and a white Jewish mother. “They believed in themselves and their rights in the world and they believed in me so that allowed me to be somebody regardless of any external definition of who I was.” Mr. Mosley tried political science and computer programming and didn’t start publishing books until he was thirty-four. Besides the mystery genre he’s published nonfiction, science fiction, graphic novels, erotica, as well as scripts for plays and television. Concerned by the lack of diversity in all levels of publishing, Mr. Mosley established The Publishing Certificate Program with the City University of New York in 1998 to bring together book professionals and students from a wide range of racial, ethnic, and economic communities for courses, internships, and job opportunities. In 2013, Mosley was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and he is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, The Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, a Grammy, several NAACP Image awards, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, he was named the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
In my opinion, Walter Mosley is a writing god and master teacher. The attention he garners is well-deserved and well-earned. I was thrilled to see full page reviews of Every Man a King in both the New York Times and Washington Post. His novels transcend the mystery genre and center on themes that are both current and crucial. His detailed observations of place are singular. I’ll close with just a few examples:
D’Artagnan Aramois’s Safe Haven was housed on the seventy-third floor of the Empire State Building. There was a light on behind the frosted window that took up the upper half of the door.
When I knocked a man’s voice called out, “Come on in.”
The office was small and notably without character. The LED lights from the desk lamp and ceiling fixture shone but didn’t really illuminate. The window gazed upon New Jersey but it was a misty day, making the Garden State look like a half-formed idea. The only serious furniture was a big oak desk that sat rather high and unevenly, reminding me of a bull intent on a tuft of tasty grass and at the same time wondering if it should gore someone.” [pp. 87-88]
Aramois studied me then. His aspect was less human and more coyote or rat; some creature that had the natural ability and inclination to gauge threat. [p. 90]
Every Man a King is full of these nuggets; read and enjoy them!
Official Website of Walter Mosley
Interview with Walter Mosely
Walter Mosley Discusses Every Man A King
New York Times Review of Every Man A King
Senator Huey Long’s “Every Man A King” Radio Address [document] [additional reading]
Terrific review KAte! Mosely has long been a favorite but haven’t read him recently. Can’t wait to pick this one up.