Always Outnumbered,
Always Outgunned

By Walter Mosley
W.W. Norton, $23

ISBN 0393045390


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Review by Tom Corcoran

Fans of Walter Mosley's mystery series starring Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins and "Mouse" Alexander will welcome his collection of stories focused on a new character, Socrates Fortlow. In "Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned," Mosley again demonstrates his ability to transplant the reader. More important, he further hones his expertise in building character depth and cloaking morality tales in day-to-day settings. The setting here is the urban despair of current-day Los Angeles. An absolute take on reality, on honor, resignation and fortitude, Mosley's 14 stories contain rage and unleash wisdom. On a larger scale, they address our nation's approach to situation ethics, race and the many forms of justice suitable for punishment and guidance.

This book is evidence
that Mosley refuses to coast
and insists that his craft expand,
balloon to fit his promise.
Socrates Fortlow has spent 27 years, over half his life, in an Indiana prison. Convicted of rape and a double murder, convinced of his own guilt and regret, he accepts parole with a tentative outlook. Defensive, wary, on a path to new violence, Fortlow wanders the streets of Watts, waiting for someone to give him an excuse to vent three decades of anger. He finds something else, three months into this phase, in a bookstore, a hangout for men who read and speak their minds. It is here that he finds that the battleground of open debate can be tougher than the fists and guns of the street; it is here that he finds the inner voice that speaks to his conscience, that asks reasons for his existence.

From those chance moments of insight, Fortlow moves on to what can only be called impoverished majesty. He converts a squalid two-room apartment in an abandoned building to something more like home. Physically powerful, rough-looking yet wise, he counsels Darryl, a young delinquent, hoping to save the kid from his near-certain fate. Demonstrating strength of purpose and mind rather than irrational violence, Socrates helps his few friends face obstacles of crime, health, booze and surrender. Through stubbornness and cunning he practically forces a grocery store manager to hire him as a delivery man. And working around his instinctive disinclination to be a snitch, he leads police to an arsonist. Each episode, each problem and decision takes Fortlow a step farther from his past, a step closer to peace of mind.

Even in its title, "Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned" suggests survival tactics in a no-win struggle. But Socrates Fortlow's combination of prison justice and street wisdom, his disdain for ill-gotten riches, guides those around him. Hand-to-mouth refugees learn to act not just on someone's rules but their own principles. Walter Mosley's dead-on delivery of dialect and attitudes allows readers to know characters they would never encounter otherwise. His grasp of character motivation, his ability to find truth in the mundane pervades these stories. The book is evidence that Mosley, himself, refuses to coast and insists that his craft expand, balloon to fit his promise. This is a book that we will read and re-read, and talk about for years. This is an accomplishment.

Tom Corcoran is a writer and photographer in Florida.

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