Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow Series #1)

Meet Socrates Fortlow, a bold and original new hero: a tough, brooding ex-convict determined to challenge and understand the violence and anarchy in his world -- and in himself. In each of the stories that compose this richly brooding novel, Socrates Fortlow, like his namesake, explores philosophical questions of morality in a world beset with crime, poverty, and racism.

In his own words, Walter Mosley describes his latest novel, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, as "a story about a 60-something ex-con after he's spent 27 years in prison for a heinous double murder. It's a group of short stories in which Socrates Fortlow attempts to find a sense of morality and ethics way down below the template of middle-class justice."

With Always Outnumbered Always Outgunned, Mosley takes a break from his critically acclaimed Easy Rawlins series, the chronicles of a rather reluctant detective (and natural-born existentialist). Mosley is the author of six bestselling Easy Rawlins mysteries: Devil in a Blue Dress (the recent film adaptation starred Denzel Washington), A Red Death, White Butterfly, Black Betty, and most recently, A Little Yellow Dog and Gone Fishin'. In August 1995 he published his first nonmystery, RL's Dream, to widespread praise. His next novel, an anxiously awaited sci-fi thriller, is called Blue Light and will be the first novel in his all new Invasion of Light trilogy, about the invasion of earth.