Often after
the end of a novel on Kindle, there's a teaser for another work by
the author. I ordinarily avoid reading the teaser because I assume it
will leave me hanging, and I hate that. Ordinarily, but not this
time. The teaser after Devil
in a Blue Dress was for Six
Easy Pieces,
a title promising me six
stories featuring Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, whose P.I. career
gets its start in Devil
in a Blue Dress, which
left me drooling for more. I took the bait, and...well,
you know I ended up hooked and hanging. I
immediately downloaded Six Easy Pieces
to see if Easy Rawlins finds Mouse or if Mouse really is dead.
I still haven't read the end
of Crimson Stain, the teaser story, to find out, although I
can't imagine Walter Mosley would take Mouse away from Easy. I just
can't. You see Mouse, aka Raymond Alexander, is to Easy what Hawk is
to Spenser, what Bubba Rogowski is to Kenzie and Gennaro, what Joe
Pike is to Elvis Cole, what Clete Purcell is to Dave Robicheaux,
what...well, you catch the drift. He's Mosley's version of modern
hardboiled noir's sidekick trope. Mouse is Easy's bad-guy buddy, the
one-man cavalry that saves Easy's butt in the nick of time again and
again and again, even though Easy tells himself he disapproves of
Mouse's style—which is to kill without blinking either eye.
I don't especially like
Mouse either, or Easy Rawlins for that matter. That's mainly because
I'm a product of white middle-class privilege and wouldn't last five
minutes in their milieu. But then I wouldn't do too well in the
Boston depicted by Parker and Lehane or the L.A. of Crais or Burke's
Iberia Parish. It's one of the fascinations of reading these crime
novels, tasting vicarious thrills of the wild side without actually
walking it. Mosley's authentic depictions and dialects come natural
to him, having grown up black and poor in Los Angeles. Devil in a
Blue Dress, published in 1990, was his debut novel. He's written
a slew of them since, winning awards and movie contracts along the
way. I'd read at least one of the Easy Rawlins mysteries in the
fourteen-book series, but the title or titles didn't stick. Easy and
Mouse stuck. The only Mosley title I remember having read, Always
Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, is from a different series,
three books featuring the character Socrates Fortlow. I remember no
details or the story, only the stark, almost too-honest writing
conjuring an atmosphere of desperation in a community wracked by
poverty, discrimination, and crime—lots of crime.
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Jennifer Beals and Denzel Washington |
Same as in Blue Dress,
which takes place just after WWII. The novel opens in a dark
little bar above a butcher shop in a black L.A. neighborhood. The bar
is run by Easy's friend Joppy, an ex-pug. Easy is surprised when a
white man enters: "He stopped in the doorway, filling it
with his large frame, and surveyed the room with pale eyes; not a
color I’d ever seen in a man’s eyes. When he looked at me I felt
a thrill of fear, but that went away quickly because I was used to
white people by 1948...
"The white man smiled at
me, then he walked to the bar where Joppy was running a filthy rag
over the marble top. They shook hands and exchanged greetings like
old friends.
"The second thing that
surprised me was that he made Joppy nervous. Joppy was a tough
ex-heavyweight who was comfortable brawling in the ring or in the
street, but he ducked his head and smiled at that white man just like
a salesman whose luck had gone bad."
Turns out the white man,
DeWitt Albright, offers Easy $100 to find a woman—yes, the one in
the blue dress. Easy doesn't like the feel of things, but he badly
needs cash. He's just been fired from his job for not showing his
boss proper respect, and he has a mortgage coming due. Without some
quick cash he knows he would lose his house. "I loved going
home," he tells us. "Maybe it was that I was raised on a
sharecropper’s farm or that I never owned anything until I bought
that house, but I loved my little home...
"The house itself was
small. Just a living room, a bedroom, and a kitchen. The bathroom
didn’t even have a shower and the backyard was no larger than a
child’s rubber pool. But that house meant more to me than any woman
I ever knew. I loved her and I was jealous of her and if the bank
sent the county marshal to take her from me I might have come at him
with a rifle rather than to give her up...
"Once I’d become a
homeowner I got mail every day— and I loved it. I even loved junk
mail."
Any doubt he'll take the job?
Any doubt DeWitt Albright is going to do Easy wrong? Any doubt the
blue-dress gal will be gorgeous, dangerous, mysterious and more? Any
doubt Easy will find himself, as the stereotypical potbellied
Southern sheriff would put it, "inna heapa trouble, boy?"
Any doubt there'll be plenty of dead bodies, having been shot,
stabbed, or beaten to a pulp? Any doubt Mouse will be responsible for
various of those corpses? Any doubt Easy will find this thrill-packed
experience enough to his liking that he'll become a private
investigator?
At one point he narrows down
his options to one: the need to find Frank Green, a
bootlegging killer known as Knifehand, who Easy believed knew where
to find the blue-dress babe: “During the next day I went to
the bars that Frank sold hijack to and to the alley crap games that
he frequented. I never brought up Frank’s name though. Frank was
skitterish, like all gangsters, and if he felt that people were
talking about him he got nervous; if Frank was nervous he might have
killed me before I had time to make my pitch.
“It was those two days more
than any other time that made me a detective.”
![]() |
Walter Mosley |
And along the way he learned
above all else the vital importance of money. “I didn’t believe
that there was justice for Negroes. I thought that there might be
some justice for a black man if he had the money to grease it. Money
isn’t a sure bet but it’s the closest to God that I’ve ever
seen in this world.”
I started to move to the Six
Easy Pieces teaser for you, but have decided to let that take
care of itself. I’ll tell you this, though, that it’s the eighth
book in the series, published in 2003. Easy’s a P.I. by now, but
also works as a school janitorial supervisor—coincidentally just as
Mosley’s father had.
Although I’ve no doubt Mouse
is alive and that Easy will find him, I want to find out how it goes.
I’m kinda hooked on this vicarious wild side walk.
[For
more Friday's Forgotten Books check the links on Patti
Abbott's unforgettable blog]
I've only ever read one Easy Rawlins book and honest to goodness, I don't remember much about it. But I do remember reading two of Mosley's Fearless Jones books and liking them very much. I met Mosley years ago in Las Vegas at a writer's convention, he was wearing a straw hat. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm curious what impression he made on you, Yvette. My notion is that he's quite cultured, in contrast to the inner-city Negro dialects of his characters.
DeleteI have read the first two Easy Rawlins books and plan to read more. And have books from his other series too. I like how Mosley writes, but the Easy Rawlins books are a bit more gritty than my preference. Still, I will go on reading them because I like what he has to say.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the excessive grit, Tracy, or what seems to me a tad over the top, but I, too, like Mosley's voice and craftsmanship. I've just finished Six Easy Pieces, and have downloaded his latest, Down the River Unto the Sea.
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