It鈥檚 1970 in Los Angeles, and Easy Rawlins has come a long way since Walter Mosley launched his series about this Black private detective with 鈥淒evil in a Blue Dress.鈥�
In that first novel, published in 1990, we met Easy as a young World War II vet. It was 1948, he鈥檇 just moved to Los Angeles after losing his job at a Houston defense plant, and he was struggling to pay his bills. Now, in 鈥淔arewell Amethystine,鈥� the 16th book in the series, Easy is a 50-year-old family man, lives in a nice house, and is the owner of a three-man private detective agency.
However, he鈥檚 still a Black man in a city where driving a nice car or walking in a white neighborhood is grounds for arrest 鈥� or even a beating.
The story begins the way so many hardboiled crime novels have over the decades. A beautiful woman walks into the detective鈥檚 office and asks for help. Her name is Amethystine Stoller. Her ex-husband, a forensic accountant, has gone missing, and she wants Easy to look for him.
As Easy presses her for details, he grows UNeasy. He can tell she鈥檚 lying about something. More than that, she reminds him of his first love, a grown woman who bedded him when he was just a boy and then disappeared. He looked for her for years and has never forgotten her.
He鈥檚 reluctant to take Amethystine's case, but he鈥檚 drawn to her. The book鈥檚 title, however, tips off readers that their budding love affair is unlikely to work out.
Easy soon discovers that her ex鈥檚 disappearance has something to do with gangsters, a Las Vegas casino and, eventually, a series of murders. For help, Easy turns to Melvin Suggs, his lone friend in the LAPD, but learns that Suggs is in hiding, betrayed by corrupt officers in the department. So now, in addition to searching for Amethystine, Easy has a second problem on his hands.
Fans of this series may be disappointed that Easy鈥檚 dangerous friend Mouse makes only a cameo appearance. However, the detective鈥檚 old pal Fearless Jones is on hand to watch Easy鈥檚 back.
Mosley鈥檚 plotting can be a bit hard to follow at times鈥攎uch like the work of Raymond Chandler, whose detective character, Philip Marlowe, worked the mean streets of Los Angeles in the 1940s. As with Chandler鈥檚 books, however, the main attraction of the Easy Rawlins novels is the superb prose. Mosley鈥檚 dialogue, much of it straight out of Watts and Compton, is pitch perfect, and some passages have the sensuous rhythm of a basement slow dance.
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winner of the Mystery Writers of America鈥檚 Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including 鈥淭he Dread Line.鈥�
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AP book reviews:
Bruce Desilva, The Associated Press
