Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

New York Timesbestselling author Walter Mosley introduces an "astonishing character"(Los Angeles Times Book Review)in this acclaimed collection of entwined tales. Meet Socrates Fortlow, a tough ex-con seeking truth and redemption in South Central Los Angeles -- and finding the miracle of survival."I either committed a crime or had a crime done to me every day I was in jail. Once you go to prison you belong there."Socrates Fortlow has done his time: twenty-seven years for murder and rape, acts forged by his huge, rock-breaking hands. Now, he has come home to a new kind of prison: two battered rooms in an abandoned building in Watts. Working for the Bounty supermarket, and moving perilously close to invisibility, it is Socrates who throws a lifeline to a drowning man: young Darryl, whose shaky path is already bloodstained and fearsome. In a place of violence and hopelessness, Socrates offers up his own battle-scarred wisdom that can turn the world around.

Walter Mosley is the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins mysteries, all available from Pocket Books: Devil in a Blue Dress, adapted for the motion picture starring Denzel Washington, A Red Death, White Butterfly, Black Betty, A Little Yellow Dog, and Gone Fishin'. His novel RL's Dream, the story of a dying blues musician and a redemptive friendship on the streets of New York, was hailed as "Mosley's finest achievement" (San Francisco Review of Books). His acclaimed short story collection, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned marks the debut of a compelling new character, streetwise ex-convict Socrates Fortlow.

He is a former president of the Mystery Writers of America, a member of the board of directors of the National Book Awards, and the founder of the PEN American Center's Open Book Committee.