SOURCE: Upson, Nicola. “Crime Waves.” New Statesman 129, no. 4488 (29 May 2000): 57.

In the following review, Upson compares Walkin' the Dog with Ernest J. Gaines's A Gathering of Old Men, commenting that both works explore “the point at which a stand against brutality and corruption becomes necessary.”

While crime writers lament the difficulties of maintaining a series character, Walter Mosley has created another expertly drawn hero, better even than his first. With Easy Rawlins, the African-American war veteran and unofficial investigator, Mosley turned the private-eye novel on its head; with Socrates Fortlow, an ex-convict forced to define his own morality in a lawless world, he has written an altogether different and more ambitious book.

Walkin' the Dog, Fortlow's second appearance, is not a crime novel, but a series of scenes in which Socrates faces the responsibilities that freedom entails. Comparatively few dramas happen here—in fact, there's no real plot to...