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Loading... Cinnamon Kiss: A Novel (edition 2008)by Walter Mosley
Work InformationCinnamon Kiss by Walter Mosley
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Best Easy R. book yet. Fast moving with character insight, metaphor, and sense of place. That includes Easy's trips to SF. The ending was a surprise and it put it over the top. Maybe ER was too hard on Bonnie, Mouse a little too God-like and perfect in his bullet-proof imperfections. And of course a lot of bad whitey but still a book I had a hard time putting down. ( ) With his daughter, Feather, at death's door suffering from a mysterious fever, Easy must accept a job from a man he despises, Robert E. Lee, arrogant, bigoted and "in certain circles, he's the most renowned private detective in the world." Easy is to work with Saul Lynx to find Philomena (Cinnamon) Cargill, servant of liberal lawyer, Axel Bowers, who Lee says has stolen a briefcase full of documents from his unnamed client and who is now out of the country. Although told to restrict his investigation to LA, Easy investigates Bowers house and finds a trunk full of Nazi memorabilia and the body of Axel Bowers. Easy solves the case, and Feather recovers but Easy's heart can not resolve Bonnie's betrayal and he asks her to leave. Easy Rawlins struggles to come up with the money to send his adopted daughter Feather to Switzerland for treatment of a deadly blood disorder, without losing everything he has worked for including a respectable job, a beautiful woman he loves, his home and possibly his life. Tough, brilliant and heart-breaking. (Reviewed in 2018) Interestingly, this book takes up where the previous one I had read left off. So, we're still in the 1960s, 1966 to be exact. The LA cops are still hideously racist, as seem to be most other white people in the story. I wonder if things have improved in the ensuing 40+ years? I read this book as an escape from the horrors of Native Son. It's actually an interesting yarn and includes hippies in this one. Hippies were just getting under way in those days, although I didn't actually know about them until a year or two later, when I was in grad school in Cambridge, MA. I don't usually follow detective series, and this is the first Easy Rawlins novel I've read, although it is apparently the 10th in the series. Easy Rawlins is a black private detective in LA in the 1960's. This is a book to read for its evocation of time and place. It's 1966, and the Watts riots have barely died down. The plot brings Easy up to San Francisco, so there are also some great portrayals of the Haight-Ashbury of the time. Maybe it's, sadly, really not all that different now. I was particularly struck by this scene in which Easy and a companion are approached by two cops at a phone booth (no cell phones then): "I couldn't help but think about the Cold War going on inside the borders of the United States. The police were on one side and Raymond and his breed were on the other. "I came out of the phone booth with my hands in clear sight. "My job was to make these cops feel that Raymond and I had a legitimate reason to be there at that phone booth on that street corner. Most Americans wouldn't understand why two well-dressed men would have to explain why they were standing on a public street." Recommended
With his latest, Cinnamon Kiss, Mosley has written what is certainly the most emotionally complex Rawlins book to date, delving deeper and more subtly into Rawlins’ pain and rage than ever before. The good guys win, the ending is bittersweet, and Mosley sets up a sequel. It's interesting to absorb the changes as Easy ages along with the times. Here, however, the distractions -- and some are pips -- get in the way of his development. Is contained in
Fiction.
African American Fiction.
Mystery.
Historical Fiction.
It is the Summer of Love and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armored car. It's farther outside the law than Easy has ever traveled, but his daughter, Feather, needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time. And his friend Mouse tells him it's a cinch. Then another friend, Saul Lynx, offers a job that might solve Easy's problem without jail time. He has to track the disappearance of an eccentric, prominent attorney. His assistant of sorts, the beautiful "Cinnamon" Cargill, is gone as well. Easy can tell there is much more than he is being told-Robert Lee, his new employer, is as suspect as the man who disappeared. But his need overcomes all concerns, and he plunges into unfamiliar territory, from the newfound hippie enclaves to a vicious plot that stretches back to the battlefields of Europe. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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