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A Little Yellow Dog (1996)

by Walter Mosley

Series: Easy Rawlins (5)

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7011132,234 (3.76)37
Easy Rawlins, working as a school janitor in Los Angeles, is seduced by a teacher into taking her dog, which her husband is threatening to kill. When the husband is murdered, Rawlins becomes the prime suspect and must clear his name. By the author of Black Betty.
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Showing 1-5 of 10 (next | show all)
This book is the one in the Easy Rawlins’ series that precedes Bad Boy Brawley Brown, the Moseley book I read first on vacation. It wasn’t available to me until half way through my second week beside the lake in Maine. Interestingly, it was written six years before its “sequel”. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t get to read it first, it explains things we're already supposed to understand by the time we begin the sequel: stuff about Easy’s having taken a straight job as the head janitor at a school, his taking up with Bonnie Shay, and Mouse's being dead (or not?).

Anyway, Easy heads into work early at the Sojurner Truth Junion High School. One of the teachers is already in. Not only that, but she has a little yellow dog, Pharoh, with her. No dogs allowed. Even worse, the little yellow dog takes an instant dislike to Easy. But the teacher convinces Easy that she's rescued Pharoh from her husband, who was going to kill Pharoh. So, helped along no doubt by a little hanky panky on a student desk, Easy agrees to shield the dog.

Later, Easy learns that the teacher had lied to him. Also, however, a man looking much like the teacher's husband, ends up dead on school grounds, in a garden. Then, when Easy goes to the teacher's house to return the little yellow dog, he finds the teacher's husband dead in an easy chair. Apparently, it was the guy's brother who expired in the school garden.

So, Easy takes Pharoh home. His young daughter, Feather, and Pharoh immediately become best friends. Feather renames Pharoh, Frenchie.

Naturally, the cops think Easy is likely implicated in the murders. Furthermore, they think he's implicated in some embezzlement going on at the various schools.

So, Easy, helped by his friend, Raymond Alexander, a.k.a. Mouse, eventually figure things out. But along the way, Mouse is shot. At the end of the book, he's in the ICU.

Oh, one other thing happens. Easy strikes up a friendship with one Bonny Shay. She's an airline stewardess who was at one time best buds with the sketchy teacher who got Easy into the mess with the little yellow dog.

Well, I'm afraid my recounting is rather incoherent. Perhaps I don't concentrate so well on vacation as I thought. I blame the loons on the lake and the chipmunk that runs back and forth in front of my seat along the shores of Parker Pond.

Anyway, like the other books in the Easy Rawlins series, this is worth one's time, a GoodRead indeed.
( )
  lgpiper | Jan 10, 2021 |
In the fifth book of Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series, Easy is settled into a legitimate, respectable job when a murder he has no part of threatens to derail him. His job is maintenance supervisor at a campus of the Los Angeles public school system. Trouble descends. As the school day begins to begin, a teacher seduces Easy into keeping her snappy, disagreeable little dog hidden so her husband won't kill it. That done, she scoots. The police descend, not because she's absent but because there's a dead body on the school grounds. The investigator knows a bit about Easy's past brushes with the police, and that's enough to make Easy the prime suspect. To extricate himself, and to rid himself of the dog who hates him, Easy has to track the now missing teacher and her husband and her close friend, a flight attendant on international flights. The track runs by dive bars, mob-owned bars, mobsters, and sundry low-lifes.

The novel's climactic confrontation holds the biggest surprise in Easy's life.
  weird_O | May 17, 2020 |
Easy Rawlins is trying to stay off the street but his sense of justice, his hidden knight errant, keeps pulling him back. Full of intersting characters (too many w similar names) and told in the first person it is a great look at late 1950's - 1960's LA thriough the eyes of a black man. Moseley writes well and his philosophical meanderings via Easy are sharp. Almost gave it a 3.5 but the ending brought it up to a 4. ( )
  JBreedlove | Jun 7, 2019 |
From previous books in the Easy Rawlins series, I'd come to see Easy as a man with a good amount of money and Mouse as a frightening, murderous thug. Here, Mouse has apparently reformed and works as a janitor, and Easy as a supervisor of the janitorial staff at a local school. Beyond those incongruities, there's a lot that The Little Yellow Dog shares with Mosely's other works in the series -- rampant promiscuity, corrupt racist cops, violence, low-lifes, criminals, con men, and ordinary people trying to get by.

Against his inclinations, Easy is drawn into a puzzling case involving multiple murders (including two male twins and a woman he's slept with). He is in some danger of losing his job, if not the two orphans he's given a home to, and is up against a Police sergeant who would like to pin the murders on Easy. To survive, he has to figure out who the various miscreants are and who did what to whom. As for the dog, it's a little yappy thing named Phoenix that he's taken in as a favor to one of the school's teachers, who says her husband has threatened to kill it. The dog functions as comic relief (it takes an instant dislike to Easy) and presents some suspense, since its presence may reveal his connection to the teacher. It turns out the case revolves around a heroin smuggling ring in which a child's croquet set serves as the means by which drugs were brought into the country.

My main reaction to this book is that it has far too many characters -- even though I kept a running list with descriptions, it was hard to keep track of them all, in part because they weren't fleshed out enough to make them distinctive. In addition, I didn't find a single memorable character, nor any to like, including Easy himself. This book has some amusing moments and interesting prose, and I credit it with its uncompromising look at the nature of early 1960s racism. However, reading it was less than an enjoyable experience. ( )
3 vote danielx | Mar 17, 2019 |
Synopsis: Easy Rawlins is the head janitor for a school. He is asked by one of the teachers to keep her dog since her husband has threatened to kill it. Not long after a body is found on the school yard and the teacher has vanished. A policeman is trying to blame the murder on Easy, so he has to not only clear himself but find out why the person was killed and how to keep from getting killed himself.
Review: The author is black and he uses his experiences to inform his writing. I rather like his work. ( )
  DrLed | Jul 12, 2018 |
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Epigraph
It was the dog's fault.
Dedication
First words
When I got to work that Monday morning I knew something was wrong. Mrs. Idabell Turner's car was parked in the external lot and there was a light on in her half of bungalow C.
Quotations
We take our friends where we can. (72)
I had my hand on the trigger and my eye in his. There was going to be blood or money on the table before long because neither one of us was walking away until the issue was settled. (94)
(Easy warily interviews someone involved in murder, each not revealing much to the other)
Our eyes met in the involuntary agreement that we were both liars. (164)
Ice didn't melt on his tongue and he didn't know, for a fact, the color of his own blood. (173)
(Waitress) 'You got to buy three drinks in here if you wanna stay. Either that or go up to the gamblin' room. You gamble?'
(Easy) 'Only with my life.' (178)
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Please distinguish between this LT Work, Walter Mosley's original 1996 novel A Little Yellow Dog, and the 2002 publication that also includes the original Easy Rawlins short story "Gray-Eyed Death." Thank you.
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Easy Rawlins, working as a school janitor in Los Angeles, is seduced by a teacher into taking her dog, which her husband is threatening to kill. When the husband is murdered, Rawlins becomes the prime suspect and must clear his name. By the author of Black Betty.

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