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Summary: Welcom Home: Coloring outside the lines again
Review: There's something about Easy Rawlins. He's a black man in the United States. There's a misnomer going around that Easy Rawlins books are mysteries. In a way, that's partly true--although I would say they're more like crime stories, or maybe procedurals. Bad Boy Brawly Brown is more of a mystery than any Easy yet. But that's only the least little thing about Rawlins. That doesn't even begin to start to scratch the surface. The thing is that he's a black man in the United States. The books are sociology more than mystery! They don't shrink or hide from it; don't justify it or make peace with it; don't accept it. They don't like it. Instead they look that devil in the eye, grab that trouble by the throat, and wrestle it to the ground. They ride it like the tiger that they can never get off. Mosley gets that feeling right, the feeling and the rhythm. He gets the texture and the nuance right; the odds right. Mosley doesn't put characters on the page; he puts people on the page; black people. Maybe not people you know, but people you recognize, recognize right off the bat. Book after book, page after page, scene after scene, word after word, there is never a misstep, never a mistake about it. Mosley's stories are not the kind in which the characters could just as well be white as black; where the names and locations and language for all intents and purposes are interchangeable with white names, locations, and language; where there would be no change in the story's feel and dynamic if it were white: like Jackie Brown, Shaft, Superfly. Mosley's books, though, are like Spike Lee Joints, only on the page (speaking of which I can't wait for them to collaborate getting somma dese on the screen). The biggest part of that is Mosley relentlessly, effortlessly, puts black feeling, black thought, black voice on the page. Open a Mosley book and you are at home. If you're black. If not you're in a mystery, but that's all good. Now Bad Boy Brawly Brown is not the best of Easy. Mosley's tour de force from Devil in a Blue Dress, A Red Death, White Butterfly, Black Betty through A Little Yellow Dog (and on the heels of those successes, Gone Fishin') would be hard, most likely impossible to match, much less to top. I mean, colors fade, iron and granite wear out, and to ask or expect a writer to be Kareem Abdul Jabbar is to reveal that you don't read a lot. But where it counts and when it counts, Bad Boy's Easy is as strong as he has ever been, most likely stronger. Easy's got a few more years on him now, he's blaming himself for the loss of his best friend Mouse, and in addition to the children he rescued and brought home to raise as his own in earlier books, he's got the love of a sister that's his match. Easy knows what time it is. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. And dammit, Easy does it.
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Summary: I hope he never stops writing Easy Rawlins' novels.
Review: This book was so good to me that I couldn't read it slow enough. I just didn't want to finish it. He is the master at this type of thing and is easily at his best with Easy. I hope that he finds a way to bring Mouse back. This is a must read.
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Summary: Corruption and unrest in 1964 Los Angeles
Review: This is the first book I've read in the "Easy Rawlins" series of detective novels. I heard Mosely speak once in a panel discussion of the legacy of Raymond Chandler, and since then I've been looking for an opportunity to read his stuff. Chandler wrote novels about corruption, about institutions that you expect to be stalwart and only gradually find out are corrupt to the core. In Mosely's books, the corruption is taken for granted up front. This is a book about relationships, about the ad-hoc institutions and problem-solving methods people put together by themselves when they KNOW the legitimate system is crooked. Easy Rawlins isn't a paid detective; he's a problem-solver doing a favor for a friend. This puts a fresh new face on the detective genre. I've never read the first Rawlins book, Devil in a Blue Dress, but I think that I'll be looking for a copy soon.
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Summary: Mosley back in his old form
Review: Walter Mosley appears to have written himself into a trap, or something like this. He seems to like the era and the atmosphere of post-war Los Angeles, the setting of the early Easy Rawlins novels. The era seems stark, unforgiving, and at the same time the morality plays that evolve are more black and white (if that's an acceptable turn of phrase) than now. He's done two volumes of short stories that are set in contemporary times, but the author has given them a veneer of racism and anger that at times seems forced, by comparison. In his latest series, he's returned to the forties and what he seems to enjoy. But in the meanwhile, he has to keep the Easy Rawlins fans happy (after all this is his fan base, an important constituency) and he can't keep reverting to Easy's earlier years, like he did in Gone Fishin' a couple of years ago. He needs to move forward. The result is Bad Boy Brawly Brown, a very good entry in the series, following Easy through the streets of 1964 Watts and Compton, as he searches for the son of a friend's girlfriend. The son is a big, strong, not-very-smart young man who's been taken in by the Black Power movement of the sixties, and it seems that there's trouble brewing. A few pages into the book, looking for the boy, Easy stumbles onto a dead body, and then finds himself fleeing the police. The book then follows Easy while he delves into the affairs of the First Men, a fictional group (I believe) that looks a bit like the Black Panthers, and crossing paths with gunrunners, women of easy virtue, old friends from Texas, thieves, and working people who inhabit the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles in 1964. I enjoyed this book a great deal, and it's well worth the wait.
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Summary: A great antidote to the Ellroy virus
Review: Walter Mosley has staked out an interesting patch for his books: a black detective who served in WWII. His picture of LA (and the US) 40-50 years ago is, I am sure, familiar to blacks my age, and likewise strangely foreign to whites. This came home to me when I read *Bad Boy*, which brings the time forward to my own adulthood. I'm a contemporary of Brawly Brown, and as I read about Easy being rousted because he sat in a car too long for a couple of white cops' taste, his honest and hardworking friends scrabbling to keep a few steps ahead of poverty in a city that sounds like the first circle of Hell, all the intellectual platitudes of the Civil Rights Movement become vivid realities. Mosley's corrupt, racist LA of the Sixties is no surprise. But he makes it real in a way coffehouse conversation can't, and he communicates his moral outrage the best way possible, by letting us do it for him. It's an odd comparison, but Mosley reminds me of Tony Hillerman in his essentially moral perspective and his commitment to teaching in the attractive guise of adventure.
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Summary: Lazy day reading
Review: Walter Mosley is a patient man - he builds his plot slowly, as slowly as his protagonist gets to find bits and pieces of information pertaining to his quest. In the process, the reader gets glimpses of the life of blacks in the 50s as an uninvolved bypasser would - no passion but plenty of color, detail and objectivity.
Unfortunately the plot never quite thickens enough. There are no real good or bad guys here and blame is shared broadly enough to make it a real - if somewhat uninteresting - story.
Pleasant reading but definitely not grasping or exciting.
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Summary: Good Easy Helps Hard Bad Boy
Review: Walter Mosley makes 5 stars again with this book, bringing Ezekiel (Easy) Rawlins and the memory of Mouse back to his fans. This was, as usual, a great read! We're ready for #8 Walter.
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Summary: THE RETURN OF EASY!
Review: What can you say-the return of one of my favorites street wise detectives. Easy Rawlins is a everyday, hardworking, street smart houstonian, who moved to L.A. for a change but instead has only encountered changes and drama every where he turns. He is the guy you call when you need help in your neighborhood. His best friend was shot and left for dead some years back but now Easy has returned. Thank you Walter Mosely. Once again Easy is helping an old friend find his stepson. The stepson, Brawly, has gotten involved with a bunch of mislead and misguided group of youngsters who want to change the world but is going about it the wrong way. All of this is taken place during the turbelant 60's when race relations are not even measured on the ricter scale. What does Easy do? So many choices and very little time. The Return of Easy-I can't wait for the next Easy Rawlins Novel.
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Summary: Mysterious, fast paced, page turner!
Review: You won't be able to put this book down. This is the best mystery novel in the world. I love fast paced novels. Another fast paced novel is In-Law Drama. Happy summer reading!
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