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Summary: "How do I know what I'm getting mixed up in?" --Easy (p. 19)
Review: In 1940's Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins begins to wonder if the city he exchanged his previous slow Southern lifestyle of Texas for is becoming "too much." When laid off from his job for refusing to bow down to his white boss, Easy finds himself scrambling to pay the mortgage on his beloved house. His bartender friend Joppy steps in and introduces him to Mr. Albright, a man who keeps his booze and his gun on top of his desk, and who says, "some of us can kill with no more trouble than drinking a glass of bourbon" (23). Albright makes a job offer for some seemingly easy money merely for finding Daphne Monet, the ex-girlfriend of the very rich man Todd Carter. Easy soon becomes entangled in a web of incest, pedophiles, liquor hijacking, and multiple murders, making his internal voices argue about whether the escalating amounts of money are worth the increasing danger put on his life. He is forced to enlist help from his old friend Mouse, someone so comfortable with killing and so eager for money, even Easy feel he has to watch his own back. Easy struggles constantly with the discrimination of his race, being beaten and framed by cops and told by Mouse: you get yourself into trouble when "you think you white" (205). Yet, black and white no longer seem so simple and colors continue to blur as Easy gets to know the elusive and threateningly seductive Daphne, whose mood changes and mystery create a surprising duality, making even her eyes shift from green to blue and blue back to green. His life is finally safe again when he uncovers her secret, which she guards so closely she tells Easy, "whenever you know somebody that well you just have to leave" (191). Following the smarts and physical prowess of the underdog Easy proves quite different from the movie and is definitely worth the easy and entertaining read. Easy becomes a detective while uncovering for readers a period of time in America where blacks, even after fighting for their country in a world war, still have to go to great lengths to hope for equality, or sometimes just to remain alive.
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Summary: Vivid Color in a World of Black and White
Review: In Devil in a Blue Dress, Mosley's cast of characters emerges from the shadows of illegal bars, dark street corners, and the backseat of a limousine. The characters introduce the reader to every form of corruption from selling stolen liquor to murder and pedophilia. Easy Rawlins steps forward in this cast of violent characters as the only one willing to explore these crimes. Haunted by memories of his life in Houston and of life during the war, Easy appears to be one of the only characters with moral standards. These beliefs both aid him and fight against him as he pieces together a variety of crimes.Mosley's novel follows the structure of a film noir, yet the description and its characters add a colorful aspect that transcends the traditional genre. The rich description of a Devil in a Blue Dress allows the events to jump out of the page. The first image of a "white man" who is "not just . . . white but he wore and off-white linen suit and shirt with a Panama straw hat and bone shoes over flashing white silk socks" alerts the reader as to the importance of appearance and observation. Easy relates this opening scene using beautifully vivid language that continues throughout the novel.
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Summary: Devilish Mystery
Review: It sounded like a deal that was too good to pass up to Easy Rawlins an African-American veteran of WWII who had just lost his job. All he had to do was hang out at jazz clubs and find a blond woman who was a friend to Mr. Albright and he would earn enough money to make his mortgage payment. Easy soon finds out that easy money is never easy! Before long it seems that Easy has met the blond, had a little interview with the police, has uncovered a few corpses and is in fear for his life. Walter Mosley's first Easy Rawlins mystery Devil in a Blue Dress is an interesting and exciting read. The post war Los Angeles of Easy Rawlins is a dangerous and difficult place to live in filled with smoke filled jazz bars, schemers, police brutality and friends who would as soon as double cross you as shake your hand. Everyone has a motive and everyone has the means to be a suspect and by the end of the book you will be shaking your head when you finally figure out who done what. Devil in a Blue Dress is definitely a book to read if you like noir mysteries. It has well developed characters and an atmosphere you can cut with a knife. Watch out you may get hooked on Easy especially when you imagine him looking like Denzel.
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Summary: Goes Beyond the Typical Noir
Review: It's a bit of an oversimplification, but the best way to describe Mosley would be 1/3 Raymond Chandler, 1/3 Ralph Ellison, and 1/3 Albert Camus. Devil in a Blue Dress is the first in a series of spell-binding mysteries revolving around L.A. private detective Easy Rawlings. After Hammet and Chandler faded away, detective fiction became a cookie-cutter formula with the same old hard-nosed detectives and the usual tangled webs of deceit. Mosley breaks this pattern. Not only does he take a look at the African American situation in the 1940's, but he also places Easy on a road of existentialism as he tries to forge out his own destiny in a white man's world. With a powerful voice, a heck of a story, unforgettable characters, and amazing imagery and symbolism, Mosley will no doubt share the cannon with Poe, Hammet, and Chandler as the only detective writers with any merit. His books flow well, read easy and quick, leave a lasting impression, and if one is willing, contain many gems to be mined just below the surface. This series is a must read for all lovers of modern literature, detective ficiton lovers, existentialists, and enthusiasts of African American literature.
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Summary: Sexism detracts from literary merit
Review: Mosley's detective story is greatly entertaining and rich with imagery. However, sexism rears its ugly head throughout the novel, and seems to unconsciously invalidate the subtle messages for social change on issues such as racism. It seems as though Mosley is picking and choosing which inequalities and stereotypical labling is acceptable, which is highly hypocritical.
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Summary: Mosley's debut is a winner
Review: Set in post-war Los Angeles, Walter Mosley's debut novel Devil in a Blue Dress is a riveting story that makes you want to read the whole series. Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran who wants nothing more than to pay his mortgage on time. This is difficult because he has been recently fired from his job at an airline factory. He thinks that his problem has been solved when a white man offers to pay a fair sum of money for him to locate Daphne Monet, a young white woman who likes to frequent black bars. But when two people are murdered, including his friend Corretta, he must do his best to save Daphne and himself. Mosley has stunning descriptions of Los Angeles that put you into the book. You can hear the characters talking when you read the dialog. I couldn't put Devil in a Blue Dress down. It it is perfect for mystery lovers or those just looking for a good entertaining book.
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Summary: Devil in a blue dress
Review: Still haunted by nightmares of the Vietnam War, and after having just lost his job in a factory, Easy Rawlins? life is far from what his namesake implies. Faced with a mortgage payment on his prized possession, a small house in Los Angeles, Easy goes against his instincts and takes a job that pays in dirty $100 bills. And thus, Easy?s career as a private investigator is launched. His first task is seemingly simple: locate a white woman who frequents black clubs. But Easy?s experience with the seedy underworld, which he finds is closely linked to the town?s respectable, rich white world, is a serious threat to his life (and at times, sexually gratifying as well). Perhaps the most dynamic aspect of the novel is Easy?s ambivalent relationship with his childhood friend, Mouse. While Easy hates Mouse and his overtly violent tendencies, Easy could not have survived had it not been for this loyal friend. This paradoxical situation in which Easy in bound is best resolved by the simple, yet profound statement which is central to one of the book?s most important themes: ?All you got is your friends, Easy,? (215). ?The Devil In A Blue Dress? is a quick read with substantial pay-offs in the plot and dialogue departments. It addresses the hypocrisy of the white world and the difficulty of an African-American man rising in social status in this white-dominated society, but more than anything, it?s a book worth reading simply because Easy Rawlins is a character worth rooting for.
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Summary: Extremely Confusing
Review: The book, Devil in a Blue Dress, was very confusing. I thought this book required too much thinking. I like reading books that are easily read and interesting. I found this book very long and never ending. I found the books wording very simplistic. It did not catch my attention. At times I had to read a sentence 3 or 4 times. There was no really clear plot. I believe the only reason it made some top lists was because it was very suspensful. Though I did not like the book, at times I would be at the edge of my chair wanting to find out what will happen. The book is basically about a man named Easy Rawlins, that is hired to find a woman named Daphne Monet. She got a hold of pictures that could destroy a mayoral election for a canidate named Mr. Teran. From that point on the story became confusing. The man that hired Easy is named Mr. Albright. He Hires Easy because he needs someone to frame for his murders he has commited. Easy soon finds out what is going on and takes matters into his own hands. I would only recommend this book for people who love all kinds of twists and turns in the plot.
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Summary: A Fine Book, But Hardly A Masterpiece
Review: The first Easy Rawlins book is more enjoyable for its physical and cultural setting than it is for its mystery or characters. Set in Los Angeles a few years after WWII, Mosley does a masterful job of depicting a multiethnic city that's still a sleepy collection of neighborhoods in many senses, but has a distinctly seedy side (not unlike James Ellroy's LA Confidential). The story is about Easy, an ex-soldier who loses his job for standing up to his white boss at an aircraft manufacturing plant. Desperate for money so he can meet his mortgage and not lose his pride and joy of a house, he's offered a lot of money to look for a white woman who's been hanging out at illegal after-hours black clubs. Of course, he's not the only one looking, and soon he's up to his neck in bootleggers, crooked politicians, racist cops, and round-the-way girls. In noir fashion, the mystery is fairly complicated, perhaps overly so with a number of minor characters who run together. As events move beyond Easy's grasp, he has to call on his old friend from Houston, Mouse, to help him out. Mouse is a thoroughly nasty bit of work, and there's some good tension between him and Easy. Ultimately, the "big" twist at the end isn't that surprising. The book is so thoroughly steeped in race that it's the only plausible solution to a number of thorny questions. As an average hardworking black man, just trying to live with dignity in a racist world, Easy is well-drawn and sympathetic. What doesn't work as well is when he hears "the voice" inside his head, which appears at moments of stress and urges him not to take any [...] and stand up for himself. It's a device that's remarkably amateurish, given the solid control Mosley exhibits over the rest of the narrative. It should be noted that the book's female characters will probably not be to the taste of many female readers, and indeed, while Mosley seems to have a very clear comment to make about race, his take on gender is rather ambiguous. It's a fine book, but nothing truly spectacular or new. It does a nice job of depicting LA at a certain time, but comparisons with Chandler and Ellison are a stretch, other than Chandler wrote in the same genre, and Ellison also wrote about race.
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Summary: The Detective Mystery Without a Detective
Review: The interesting thing about the detective in this detective mystery is that he is not a detective at all, not technically anyway. Easy Rawlins is an African American living in post-war Los Angeles who just wants to make a good living and enjoy a quiet life in his own home. However, when he's laid off, he can't make his mortgage and he's going to lose his house and he would rather do anything than that. He finds, though, that he has to do more than he bargained for. All of a sudden, Easy is a detective, one whose reward becomes remaining alive. Though he isn't your average detective, Easy does a good job of keeping himself low and hunting for the facts. Surprisingly enough, he exerts great intuition when it comes to detecting and manages to keep himself afloat, despite all the hurtles that are thrown his way. Mosley does a great job of capturing a people, a culture, and a place that we don't get to read much about. He keeps us involved, not only in Easy's character, but in the character of the times, providing vivid images of seedy jazz clubs, dangerous underground bars, and dark alleys. Throughout the book, you get to see, firsthand, what it would be like to be an African American war veteran in the 1940s in Los Angeles, California. The reader experiences the racial prejudices and the struggle to find a job to support your family as well as the excitement of the fast-faced metropolis and the music of local clubs. These two facets of the novel, the culture and the detective mystery, make this book a wonderful addition to the detective mystery genre.
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