Devil in a Blue Dress + Crimson Stain

Devil in a Blue Dress introduced Walter Mosley's hero, Ezekiel (Easy) Rawlins to the reading public. A fast-flowing narrative with a story somewhat complex in a bare-bones kind of way, Mosley takes us into Raymond Chandler country - Los Angeles after the war. But this is a slightly different perspective because Easy happens to be a black man. He becomes a private-eye of sorts in order to locate a blonde French girl named Daphne Monet for a white man he doesn't quite trust. Daphne has a penchant for black men, and haunts the world of dusty underground bars and hole-in-the-wall jazz joints Easy knows all too well.

Finding her may not be Easy's only problem, however, as someone is out to kill him, prompting him to employ his old pal, Mouse, show more to watch his back while he investigates. Mouse is sharply drawn by Mosley as an amoral yet likable killer; deadly as an enemy, unequaled as a friend. Easy is portrayed by Mosley as a decent man who understands his world and his place in it, but doesn't like it one bit. Like Ross Macdonald's, Lew Archer, Easy is more comfortable being an observer of human cruelty and frailty than a participant.

Easy's attraction to the beautiful white girl, Daphne Monet, and his uneasiness about what may really be going on, underscores a complex and riveting narrative in which everyone might just have underestimated Easy. Mosley makes the larger story here not the case, but the story about a good man in a not-so-good world, trying to detach himself from it all, only to discover it is part of who he is. Mosley's "Mouse" is unforgettable, and in some respects what Hawk is to Spenser in Robert B. Parker's series.

Daphne has more to hide in this novel than just money, and its truth is the impetus for everything that happens. There is murder here, and greed, and something Easy has seen way too much of, even for a black man in post WWII Los Angeles -- sorrow. This is a fine read and a perfect introduction to Easy Rawlins. White Butterfly might be a slightly better book, in my opinion, but Devil in a Blue Dress is highly recommended to mystery fans. show less

It's 1948 in Los Angeles, and WWII vet Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins is just trying to live a quiet life in the tiny house he's proud to be able to afford. Except he may not be able to afford it much longer, having recently been fired from his aircraft factory job. So when he's offered a couple of mortgage payments worth of cash to do a job for a friend's gangster buddy, he takes it. The task seems simple: go into a few bars and clubs of the kind where the white gangster would stick out too much, ask around about a certain woman the gangster is trying to find, and report back. Of course, it turns out to be nowhere near as simple as it sounds, and by the end there are quite a few dead bodies piling up.

The plot starts out slow and eventually show more gets convoluted enough that I probably should have had more sleep before reading it. It's not bad, but not by itself incredibly compelling. The novel has a lot of other things going for it, though: It's very smoothly written, in a simple style that hints at a lot going on underneath the surface. Easy himself also has a lot going on underneath the surface, and I found him increasingly interesting as the story went on. There's a good noir-ish atmosphere and it does a deft and effective job of conveying the desperation -- sometimes quiet, sometimes violent -- of being a black man in that particular time and place. (It occurs to me, somewhat shamefully, that I'm not sure I've read much of anything set in this particular time period that wasn't mostly about white people. The world Easy lives in is thus largely unfamiliar to me, and it really shouldn't be.)

This is the first in a series, and I'd say it's one I'm reasonably likely to continue with at some point. Although that brings me to one annoying feature of the edition of the book I have: It also includes a short story about Easy, which is fine, except that it's set decades later and included before the novel, rather than after it. Meaning that the a new reader like me gets a look at these characters' futures before even being properly introduced to them, which really does not seem to be doing it the right way around. Worse, the story ends with the instruction to "Read Six Easy Pieces for the conclusion." I mean... what? Did they give us an incomplete story?! As far as I can tell from using the "look inside" feature at Amazon, I think it probably is the entire story, and it does at least get as far as telling us whodunnit, even if it ends pretty abruptly afterward. Whether the piece is actually lacking its conclusion or not, though, this is just a crass and offensive bit of marketing. An excerpt from another book included in the back, clearly presented as a teaser is one thing, but this? Come on! show less

Great, twisty hard-boiled crime thriller with well-drawn characters and a large dose of reality of being a black man in America. Unfortunately, police brutality has not changed much since the fourties. We also have a white femme fatale, a doomed love affair, a dangerous friend, and dangerous, ugly truths. An entertaining but also thought-provoking read.

A quick-miving mystery. My favorite aspects were the well-drawn eccentric characters and the discussion of race in a post-WW II America.

I believe Walter Mosley got quite a bit of buzz when he first published Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990. I seem to recall that I began to read it at the time, but for some reason didn't get very far. Perhaps I just wasn't into noir fiction back then. A couple of years ago we listened to White Butterfly, another in the series, and enjoyed it very much. So when I saw this on Audible I couldn't resist giving it another try.

The narration, by Michael Boatman, adds immeasurably to my enjoyment. Boatman sounds just as I would imagine Easy does (the story is told in first person) and the voices he does for the other characters, including the women, are believable as well. Mosley himself has an excellent ear for dialect and dialog, and the show more combination of author and narration takes the listener to a completely different place -- in this case, Watts, Los Angeles, 1948.

Devil in a Blue Dress explains how Easy Rawlins went from working in an aircraft factory to being a private investigator. Easy is a black World War II veteran, originally from Houston, who has ended up in Watts and has bought a small house. He is so thrilled to own his own home that he even enjoys receiving junk mail, so when he loses his aircraft factory job because of a disagreement with the white foreman, his main concern is how to make his next mortgage payment. When his bartender friend introduces him to a mysterious white man who offers him $100 to search for a missing young woman, Easy takes on the job, despite some misgivings which turn out to be well-founded.

Although the plot is fascinatingly full of incident, the characterizations and setting are equally strong. Easy is a complicated man with simple desires which the world seems eager to thwart. The setting of LA in the 40s, legally integrated but still full of racism, adds to the tension of the story. Very highly recommended. show less

Debut novel by Walter Mosley. It's uneven (the plot is too convoluted) but I loved the atmosphere of the novel. It's almost like Raymond Chandler moved his action into black LA community. I am definitely going to read other his books.

Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins has been laid off from his job at an aircraft factory in Los Angeles. His friend Joppy, who owns the bar that he frequents, hooks him up with a sort of PI job: a white man is looking for a girl named Daphne Monet, and this man needs Easy to check the black nightclubs and bars in LA to see if she’s there. Because Easy needs the money, he takes the job, but not without misgivings. This is LA hardboiled detective fiction that will appeal to fans of Raymond Chandler; it’s not difficult to imagine Rawlins and Marlowe walking the same streets or having a crossover episode. I’m not sure that I was able to guess how the mystery was to be solved, but the book rocketed along nicely and really brought postwar LA to show more life. I’d probably pick up more books in the series if they were on the shelf. show less