for several years. One of the men Joe’s father shot 30 years earlier has now been murdered, and Joe is the prime suspect. Joe also learns that his father was framed back then and agreed to take the fall after the non-existent robbery.

While Joe tries to make up for lost time, locate Chief, and discover the actual killer, he also works on a second case, a referral from his former cop partner. A California woman with a seven-year-old daughter fled to New York in a custody dispute, and the girl’s father hires Joe to find the missing pair. Locating the missing woman is easy, but Joe learns that there’s far more than a simple custody dispute at stake. Instead, the husband is a dangerous abuser who wants to make his wife pay permanently for the trouble she’s caused him.

Been Wrong So Long has plenty to offer fans of both hardboiled detective action and more traditional whodunits. The abusive ex-husband is wealthy and has access to several unsavory goons to do his bidding. Fortunately, Joe has some highly skilled friends available to act as bodyguards for the wife and daughter who go into hiding with his help. That case concludes in a hail of bullets and a rising body count. Joe also has to get down and dirty in his quest to clear his father’s name, rescuing a woman from a human trafficking ring along the way. Many of Joe’s connections are characters from earlier novels in the series. Newcomers like me may be unfamiliar with the origins of these earlier relationships, but their combat skills are apparent and entertaining.

When Joe isn’t making war, he’s making love. He has an eye for the ladies and no difficulty getting them to spend an hour or an evening in bed with him. He has encounters with three or four different women (essentially every age-appropriate female character in the story) throughout a little over 300 pages. However, although Been Wrong So Long is densely plotted, I had little difficulty keeping up with the various plot threads, despite Joe shifting attention from one case to the other several times during the book. The author dropped too many names in rapid succession a few times. A few times, Joe conversed with multiple characters identified only by their first names. These had all been introduced earlier in the story (and sometimes in other books in the series). However, I had to figure out how they got in the same room with Joe and what their relationship was with each other. My occasional confusion in this regard is my one criticism of the book.

Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right takes its title from a putdown Joe delivers to his father when the two finally meet. In that regard, the author could easily have come up with several dozen similar titles taken from the story’s colorful dialog. Walter Mosley is an expert at descriptive phrasing in dialog and Joe’s narrative description of people and places. My favorite pitch-perfect character description occurs when one of Joe’s friends refers to the abusive ex-husband and says: “It’s like he’s a rat with a permanent case of rabies.” (Joe’s own nickname for the man, “Ogre Orr,” pales in comparison.)  

The book is a joy to read beyond its story for the offbeat characters. One minor character is Grandma B’s new boyfriend, a fellow nonagenarian who is one of the wealthiest men in the world and who met Grandma at their ballroom dancing class. He’s pretty much a throwaway character, but the author makes an extra effort to give him far more personality and intriguing character traits than the plot requires. The bad guys are sleazy, but they feel fully developed as well. The abusive ex-husband sends a couple of goons (nicknamed Cain and Abel by Joe) after his former wife, but they turn out to be quite distinct personality types from each other. Joe’s encounters with them are different and more complex than you usually find in this type of novel.

Crime fiction fans will love Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right, no matter what appeals to them in the genre. The book has a tricky plot, lots of action, great description, and interesting characters. The author also keeps things going rapidly, even as Joe goes from one end of New York to the other. Walter Mosley hasn’t missed a step, and this is one of his better books. Readers won’t be wrong reading the latest Joe Oliver novel; instead, it will feel just right.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.