Sarjan 2. osa. ( )

Red Death is Walter Mosley's continuation of his debut novel, Devil in a Blue Dress. In Devil in a Blue Dress we meet Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins, a hard drinkin', hard lovin' unofficial Los Angeles detective who has an eye for the ladies and is a magnet for trouble. In Red Death Easy gets himself tangled in yet another scandal, this one political. Taking place in the 1950s, Easy faces the paranoia brought on by Communism and the ever present racial tensions as he deals with not only the IRS, but the FBI. Both want him, but for very different reasons. As always, Easy doesn't shy away from trouble. Once again, Easy is sexy and dangerous all at once. ( )

Read this for a book club- wasn't really my cup of tea - full review is here: http://booksandneedlepoint.blogspot.c... ( )

It's now 1953, and Easy is coerced by the FBI to help infiltrate what they think might be a communist cell in a church where a well-know union organizer, and suspected communist, Chaim Wenzler, works. The FBI gets leverage on Easy because the IRS has suspicions about his hidden income from properties and buildings that he owns on the sly, and on which he has paid no taxes. The story gets complicated when Easy in fact comes to like Wenzler and the good work that he is doing to try to help the poor, without any communist propaganda. But then people start to get murdered, and it looks like Easy may be fingered for some, if not all, of them. In the end, the story hinges more on the good old human frailty of greed and the increasingly complicated coverups perpetrated by the key bad guy, than on any grand subversive plot by the commies. Again, good atmosphere of the position of poor blacks in an incredibly racist society, and the almost completely separate world in which they lived, a world with its own values and principles, quite at odds with the prevailing attitudes of the American dream.
(June/00)