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A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime style shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at occasions, weird tales about bruised, delicate souls in love and bother.

In one of many 17 tales that make up this assortment, a supporting character says: “Individuals are so afraid of dying that they don’t even reside the little little bit of life they’ve.” She casually drops this gnomic commentary as a approach of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. However her aphorism may apply to nearly all of the eponymous awkward Black males examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one in every of his occasional departures from detective fiction to light up the numerous methods Black males confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There may be, for example, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects extra simply with family pests than he does with the ladies who work in his constructing. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Virtually Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls right into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, finally, enlightenment. Maybe most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York Metropolis residence after being traumatized by a serious storm and finds himself taken by the skin world as a prophet—not of doom, however, possibly, peace? Not all these awkward sorts are hapless or benign: The brief, shy surgeon in “Lower, Lower, Lower” seems to be one thing like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells whereas “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an genuine Black cowboy from Texas who’s not precisely an ideal match for New York Metropolis however is quickly compelled to do the suitable factor, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley fashion stays fixed all through these tales whilst they show assorted approaches from the gothic to the surreal.

The vary and virtuosity of those tales make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, possibly, finest e-book.