Rating: 
Summary: Mosley Takes a Step Back in A Good Sophomore Effort
Review: A Red Death is not the novel Devil In A Blue Dress is, but really what could be? Mosley's style and storytelling are just as sharp, and he takes time to further develop the character of Easy Rawlins, the protagonist and narrator. The main story of the novel is the same as Devil in a Blue Dress, Easy, a good man, comes into some trouble and has to use his wits, his fists, and his crazy friend Mouse (who conveniently has no problem with any moral questions that may arise on the streets of L.A) to get him out. Mainly what a Red Death lacks is the tension, the overbearing sense of danger that hangs over every page of his first novel. The classic mystery elements of the plot are niether as complex nor are they as well defined as in Blue Dress. Too many details of the mystery are kept from the reader, therefore the audience is not as engaged during the story and not as satisfied with the resolution. These little disappointments however, will not keep me from following Easy Rawlins in White Butterfly!
Rating:
Summary: The Blaxploitation Movie's Daddy
Review: Even though Mosley's popular whodunnits started taking shape in the 90's, it's easy to see that the stories he writes stemmed from a certain influence: Shaft, maybe even Black Ceasar, et al. for the action and "givin' it to da man!" undertones. Mixed in with a little bit of "Cotton Comes to Harlem" and "Mohagany" for the occasional romance and levity. In fact, his works don't seem much different than what you would see on the 1973 big screen in a theatre packed to the back with black faces. Note the similarities... 1. You've got your classic hard brother, be he a private dick or just a good guy out to get what's coming to him. Easy, in classic Easy fashion, is a guy trying not to do what's wrong because he's seen enough of that. A hard drinker because of the pain his past has caused him, this fellow with kill only if he has to. 2. There's always the white folks who turn out to be the bad guys. They're cops or ganglords or jerks with a ton of dough. Here we have Lawrence, a tax agent who comes down on Easy because of tax evasion. Second we have Craxton, the FBI guy who wants to use Easy for his own purposes, but makes a deal with him - do my bidding and I'll chill out that tax thing. Finally, there is Officer Fine, a bit player who lusts after the cries and screams of anything black. 3. Can't forget how nobody else "understands him but his woman." And she's black, no way around that. With Easy, he's messing around with a woman who can get him killed as sure as the day is long: Mouse's wife. Now if that's not a mistake, I don't know what is. Mouse is Easy's friend, for one thing. For another, he's a cold-blooded killer. But Easy's willing to risk it all for love. 4. Must mention the white woman he cheats on her with. This is thrown in soley to annoy the white man. In 1970, this act of spite was a given. And it's in this book too. 5. Jive talk. Nothing but jive talk. It simply must be indicative of the era and this novel plays out perfectly as a piece choc full of blacks who were taught how to talk by their 1930's parents, who were taught to talk by THEIR 1900 former slave parents, who, before that, were educated in grammer and English by Africans who weren't even born here and ignorant overssers. Mosley is obviously no stranger to this snowball effect that whites have come to call "ebonics." As the credo goes, "write what you know." 6. The hard brother has to be a vigilante type. No way is he an angel. Easy has taken lives and he regrets it. He drinks like it's going out of style and he needs it. He cheats The Man out of his money to keep things balanced. He can be a sinner, but he must be able to rationalize it believably or the reader (watcher) won't sympathize with him. No problem with that here. So yeah, it's like a blaxploitation movie with one catch: the white friend. I've never seen that in the movies, yet I've read two of Mosley's books and in both he seems to project his antagonists with an affinity for Jews, similarizing their plights in doomed histories. This approach is effective in that it shows open hearts and opened minds during an era of rampant hate. I liked this book because I could identify with many of the characters, some of whom I am ashamed to say I feel like I've known well in my lifetime. But there's just something about the story that keeps it average...
Rating: 
Summary: Mosley Has Got It.
Review: I had to read this book for a cold-war fiction class. I was farmilliar with A Devil in a Blue Dress, though I hadn't read the book or seen the movie. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It's especially interesting when compared to the Mike Hammer series of 1950s Mickey Spilane novels! It's like the other side of the coin, and comparing the two types of books can be quite interesting. Read it for fun and insight.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: I had to read this book for a cold-war fiction class. I was farmilliar with A Devil in a Blue Dress, though I hadn't read the book or seen the movie. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It's especially interesting when compared to the Mike Hammer series of 1950s Mickey Spilane novels! It's like the other side of the coin, and comparing the two types of books can be quite interesting. Read it for fun and insight.
Rating:
Summary: Mosley Has Got It.
Review: I was pleasantly surprised with this book. Mosley has a capacity to distill the hero's internal conflict without it coming off like he's a sissy. He puts into words what Hammett and Chandler leave for you to surmise about the stress the main character's going through. The story itself is very clever. You don't really see it coming and it unfolds pretty well with enough foreshadowing to make the outcome credible. The backdrop of red-baiting L.A. in the '50s is excellent. All around a good story. I only have two knocks on this book. First, the gratuitous use of bad language takes the dignity of the book down a notch or two. I understand that Mosley is not your father's mystery writer. So I understand the cussing in the dialogue. But it's evident in the narration too. Good writers know how to get the point across without needlessly going blue. Just think of the difference between "The Thong Song" and "You Send Me." They both evoke the same feeling. But you'd play the latter over the former and feel good about yourself. The second criticism is this: Mosley, try as he might, doesn't describe the setting sufficiently well to put the reader in the mind of 1950's L.A. He's terrific when describing the state of racial relations, but Mosley doesn't give enough scenery for the reader to feel like he's back in time. Enjoy this very good book.
Rating: 
Summary: Exceptional novel
Review: I'm not quite sure if this novel qualifies entirely as a mystery novel because there are so many layers that permeate the book, envelop the senses and relate to the reader about another world that sits on the fringes of everyday African-American reality. There is within thsi book something that can only be compared to the U.S. discovering a Nazi secret decoding book. There is a cadence, a language, a knowledge that is carried within Africanist people, thrugh the neighborhoods, the folks that live in them that is apparent here. That's very, very hard to translate adequately on to paper, to reveal that code, bare it to the light of publication and yet in many ways still keep it private. Easy Rawlins is more complicated than simply being a good man. He's a bit of a tortured man, wanting his best friends woman and child as his own, risking death to be with them and then still remaining loyal to his insane friend Mouse and telling him where they are. Problem #1. Problem #2 Another insane man, an IRS man who is after Easy for not paying his taxes and who challenges Easy as at face value, the color of his skin not realizing that Easy will kill him, wants to kill him and is only stopped by a meeting with Problem #3---an insane FBI agent who wants Eays to infiltrate a Baptyist church to root out communists. Of course Easy knows that communism is the scapegoat for the ol' okey-doke but he's in a terrible spot and getting more and more desperate. Usually half way through a book you can see where it's going, who has to die, who the killer is, even why the killer did something but Mosley turns this around into something that chugs the mystery along but makes it secondary to whatever is goign on in Easy's life. Every thing has a freenzy, a desperation in Easy's life---love, sex, money but he's trapped by what color he is and where he's comfortable. I read this book in a night and felt a nice comfort in its' embrace, its' soft language and hard people. People who drift in and out of the story, some mattering, some not but all the same all of them are watching Easy, some with love, most not. I don't know if this can be seen as the best book from a series and I don't even know if a series can be seen from these books---they stand on their own but shoudl be read one right after the other. I'm jumping all over the Easy map now but the one thing I can say is that I met Mr. Mosley, I wa swalking with a friend and he wa sstanding by a tree in the Village, and right before we got close enough to speak with shared a glance, a look that communicated so much, as much as Easy does in and more about what it is to be an African-American man simply being, how trouble gonna come for you and your choices are face it, run, kill it or be killed. Not too many books teach aabout manhood, African-American manhood so deftly. Buy the book, send it to a friend, not all of them will get it but then tell them that this is why African-American strangers nod, say hello to each other---we all know the code.
Rating:
Summary: A window into a very different world
Review: One of the great things about fiction is that not only do you get the fun of plot and characters, sometimes you really can learn something. This book really opened the eyes of both my husband and I about the world of 1950's Watts and the whole red-baiting McCarthyism scene. Pretty scary stuff but a good thing for two white boomers. EZ Rawlins continues to grown as a character. Clay's narration on the unaudited tape is terrific. The side characters are pretty interesting. The plot is solid and has a dandy twist at the end. Still, what lingers with me is the scenes of black life - the churches, the bars, EZ's wisdom on concealing his wealth. A good read if you like mysteries and/or are interested in a look at African-American culture from a point of view other than the Oprah books.
Rating:
Summary: A window into a very different world
Review: One of the great things about fiction is that not only do you get the fun of plot and characters, sometimes you really can learn something. This book really opened the eyes of both my husband and I about the world of 1950's Watts and the whole red-baiting McCarthyism scene. Pretty scary stuff but a good thing for two white boomers. EZ Rawlins continues to grown as a character. Clay's narration on the unaudited tape is terrific. The side characters are pretty interesting. The plot is solid and has a dandy twist at the end. Still, what lingers with me is the scenes of black life - the churches, the bars, EZ's wisdom on concealing his wealth. A good read if you like mysteries and/or are interested in a look at African-American culture from a point of view other than the Oprah books.
Rating: 
Summary: Average and ordinary mystery
Review: People say that Mosley's characters are full of depth, but I'd have to disagree. It's a conventional mystery with the everyday mystery characters: good guy, bad guy, guy you're not too sure about, and a chaotic mess of characters indifferent to the plot who are only there to create a disturbance. It was supposed to be set in the 50's, but there was a great lack of signs that it was in the 50's, and the few signs that were there felt thrown in--an oh-by-the-way.
The characters seem written from a story workshop approach, rather than by a writer who feels the character. A separation between feeling a character and describing a character.
Some say there are layers and layers to this novel. A pineapple has layers and layers. Anything can be interpreted, now whether or not it asks to be interpreted is something different. Interpret James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, what a baby wants when it cries: these are valid. Interpreting for the sake of interpreting is just what it is.
It is an easy read, perfect for when the mind doesn't want for much thought; for example, read it on the bus or in the car while driving to here and there.
Rating:
Summary: Average and ordinary mystery
Review: People say that Mosley's characters are full of depth, but I'd have to disagree. It's a conventional mystery with the everyday mystery characters: good guy, bad guy, guy you're not too sure about, and a chaotic mess of characters indifferent to the plot who are only there to create a disturbance. It was supposed to be set in the 50's, but there was a great lack of signs that it was in the 50's, and the few signs that were there felt thrown in--an oh-by-the-way.
The characters seem written from a story workshop approach, rather than by a writer who feels the character. A separation between feeling a character and describing a character.
Some say there are layers and layers to this novel. A pineapple has layers and layers. Anything can be interpreted, now whether or not it asks to be interpreted is something different. Interpret James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, what a baby wants when it cries: these are valid. Interpreting for the sake of interpreting is just what it is.
It is an easy read, perfect for when the mind doesn't want for much thought; for example, read it on the bus or in the car while driving to here and there.
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