Gone Fishin': An Easy Rawlins Novel, by Walter Mosley (Serpent's Tail, £5.99 in UK)

"It seems somehow fitting that Bill Clinton's favourite do-gooder is Easy Rawlins, a savvy, down-to-earth African-American private eye based in Los Angeles," Time magazine commented on Walter Mosley's bestselling, street-smart crime novels. Gone Fishin', Mosley's first, introduces Ezekiel Rawlins in Houston, Texas, at the tender age of nineteen, inaugurating a series of stories, six so far, narrated by the hero himself. His authentic ghetto vernacular is so genial that he makes sex and violence seem like a good joke. In Gone Fishin', Rawlins is led astray by his friend Mouse Alexander, who propels the plot at a dizzy pace. He persuades Rawlins to accompany him to the dangerous bayou country of Louisiana, where Mouse means to claim his dead mother's money from an obstructive step-father. A nymphomaniacal witch, a voodoo doll and a couple of deaths broaden Rawlins's education. The fishing is done with a gun. P.S.C.