Diablerie: A Novel

By Walter Mosley

Book Overview

In this icy noir from a master of American fiction, the darkest secrets are the ones we keep hidden from ourselves. Ben Dibbuk has a good job, an accomplished wife, a bright college-age daughter, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1596913975
• ISBN13: 9781596913974
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.1" x 0.8" x 6.2"

Customer Reviews

If Pit Bull Terriers Could Talk

Walter Mosley Meets Andrew Vachss: If Pit Bull Terriers Could Talk Here is the moment in this novel to which I will return, again and again, to study and learn: the lie detector test. "Diablerie" 's narrator has been arrested as a murder suspect, and is strapped up to a lie detector in a room full of officers, lawyers, and professionals. The results of this test will go a long way toward deciding whether or not the suspect will end up serving hard time. It is a moment of the highest drama. And, in accordance with Mosley's unblinking, unflinching focus on trauma survivors, this pivotal moment receives a description as clinical as a spinal tap. The last time I read something like this, the name on the book was not Walter Mosley, but Andrew Vachss, champion of victims of childhood sexual abuse, and dog lover, particularly fond of mastiffs and pit bull terriers. The prose is pared down, except in brief memorable passages like that in which the narrator, an abstinent alcoholic, longs for a glass of brandy. The reading of this bare-bones prose, like the point of view experienced by its protagonist, is an ordeal to be endured, an exercise in stoicism. And the reader for whom this novel will be most meaningful is the reader familiar with -- or even with professional expertise in -- the rehabilitation of humans or animals born and bred as objects of abuse and violence. Much is presumed of the reader of Diablerie, and Mosley, already an eminent and influential writer, has raised the bar very high. He writes as though he wants actual trauma survivors, with first-hand knowledge of dissociation and the professional therapy necessary to change dissociation, to believe that the protagonist is one of them. Diablerie has received much negative press from professional critics and book lovers, and these responses speak for many other people who will face the tests and trials of this novel, and find themselves unprepared for its rigors. The day is coming, sooner or later, when Diablerie will command the respect that it is due. Personally I like to imagine the creators and actors of The Wire (HBO) plunging into the riptide of currents in this novel, and presenting a filmed version, with visual images that fill out the echoing resonant silences in Walter Mosley's narrative. Done properly, such a film could bring Academy Award nominations to its participants. For, to the reading public at large, it would take a really great motion picture to make this terse novel a comprehensible experience. No, this is not Mosley's most accessible or best-loved book, nor does it need to be. If anyone cherishes Diablerie -- and some of us do -- it will be those of us who have looked at photographs of the pit bull terriers seized from Michael Vick, those who were spared euthanasia and surrendered to an animal sanctuary for rehabilitation, some court-ordered to remain their for life, -- those who have looked at the canine eyes in these photographs, round, gleaming, pregnant with unexpres

Mosley just keeps getting better.

Diablerie by Walter Mosley, 2007. I read the first few Easy Rawlins books, but eventually got bored with the series. This is the first Mosley I have picked up in a while, and he is not just back in stride but breaking into new and fascinating territory. This is a gripping psychological thriller about a man, Ben Dibbuk, who has led a life of remarkable dullness for twenty-some years since quitting drinking and the violence and blackouts that had engendered in distant Colorado. He has the most boring of programming jobs, maintaining a bank's antiquated system in Cobol and assembly language, and a marriage of such distance and infrequent sexuality that it is amazing he has a daughter in college. His wife Mona is constantly picking arguments, perpetually dissatisfied, but he calmly and logically deals with them. His only ventures to the wild side are a bow tie at work and a young mistress, an immigrant student he met as a waitress and now supports. But even that relationship is kind of boring, a bit of quid pro quo as he sees it. His wife has a contrastingly exciting life in publishing, and one day forces him to go to the launch party for a new magazine, "Diablerie", at which a woman comes up and acts as if he is an old acquaintance, a significant one from the Colorado days, calling herself Star. It turns out she is the keynote speaker, whose story of unwilling involvement in a string of brutal murders (she was imprisoned but recently found innocent) is the lead story of the first issue. Then things start to come apart. Ben discovers his wife is having an affair with "Harvard Yard" Rollins, an ex-cop investigator for Diablerie, who is investigating Ben. The affair doesn't really bother Ben, quite understandable and all that, he doesn't give Mona what she wants. But Star is accusing him of a murder long ago in Colorado, which he has no memory of but cannot totally rule out. The investigators, Harvard and a DA from Colorado, get Ben in trouble with his office. He discovers his daughter, rather than being on a track to normalcy has serious problem sof herown. Ben calls his brother, who is in prison and not happy to hear from him, and his mother, who is only sorry she ever had such a son who can't even come to his father's funeral or call for years on end. Ben goes back into therapy, and begins to recover old memories, or maybe confabulatory dreams. He is arrested, and rescued by perhaps his only friend, the mysterious and powerful Cassius Clay "Cass" Copeland, director of security at the bank who has a range of shadowy contacts. Freed, Ben is free to look into his past, and the mystery here is not just whether he killed a man in 1979, but whether he can create a new life for himself, one not so completely numbed and dissociated. There are a few problems: The economics of supporting three households (home, daughter in college, and mistress) on a "very low six figure salary" in New York, where the daughter's roach infested apa

Mosley takes another walk on the mental side...

To be honest I was a little wary about getting this book because I saw the ratings. However, Walter Mosley is a favorite of mine and I wanted to see for myself. I REALLY liked this book. I think the problem that a lot of people are having is comparing this work to his Easy Rawlins series. I've (mistakenly) done it with other authors and people are doing it with this one. You CAN'T compare the two. When you read this book the worst thing you can do is compare it with his other stuff. Easy Rawlins, Fearless Jones are icons that make literature fun and make literature timeless. But Mosley is too talented to be limited to that. Diablerie was a novel that compltely messes with your mind and pulls you in the mind of a regular man with some serious problems. It's a very, very short book which actually adds to the story. This is a cross beteween a mystery, psychological thriller, erotica, and just plain good ole fiction! I really enjoyed 'Killing Johnny Frey'and I enjoyed 'Diablerie'. I like how Mosley "steps out" and does something unconventional. I, for one, hope he continues on this path. I'll always love and enjoy Easy, Mouse, Jesus, and Bonnie but a talented author like Mosley probably needs to push the envelope to keep his mind and imagination sharp.

Another engrossing yarn from a master

Walter Mosley has composed another exemplary novel. His characters are fully formed and their stories are unfailingly engrossing. I can't imagine any reader who appreciates good writing not applauding this book.

DARING, ADVENTUROUS, POWERFUL

Compact, concise, compelling. Dark. Walter Mosley has crafted a brief novel, an exploration of the human psyche that grips the reader with the opening page. We know the protagonist's name. It is Ben Dibbuk, he's an almost 50-year-old computer programmer, married with a daughter in college. He has Svetlana, a Russian mistress his daughter's age. Nonetheless, exactly who is Ben Dibbuk? He's alienated, unable to care for anyone or anything. Nothing matters to him - not his wife, Mona, his daughter, Seela, or his work. He simply would like to be left alone. Earlier he had suffered from frightening nightmares and went into therapy at the behest of Mona. The terrifying dreams stopped after awhile as did his visits to the therapist. One day Mona insists that he go to a banquet with her, an evening with her co-workers at a fashion magazine, Diablerie. It is there that he's approached by the keynote speaker, Star, a woman who claims to know him. He has no recollection whatsoever of her. When she tells him the exact date they were together, he replies, "That's back when I was still drinking......I was just telling the waitress there that I've forgotten more nights than I remember." That same evening he is introduced to Harvard Rollins, a fact-checker for the magazine, and as he later learns his wife's lover, the man she has asked to look into Ben's past. Why? At this point for whatever reason he feels compelled to get in touch with his mother, a woman he hasn't seen in 15 years. Just before Ben hung up he heard his mother say, "...I never thought I'd feel that I regretted my own son's birth but-" He also places a telephone call to his brother, Briggs, who is now in jail. Briggs remembers another phone call from Ben some 20 years earlier in which Ben asked questions about criminal apprehension, mentioned something wrong that he had done, and that there had been a witness - a woman by the name of Star. Moseley is a master of prose. Who else would describe an alcoholic's desire for cognac as "...rich amber liquor moving through my veins like chamber music on a sunny afternoon in a many-windowed room in July"? He's also a master at creating an intriguing mystery, one that is irresistible to readers and grows deeper as the narrative moves on. Daring, adventurous, powerful, Moseley is all of these as he proves once again in the hauntingly erotic Diablerie. - Gail Cooke