Walter Mosley Literature

47
by Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

Number 47, a fourteen-year-old slave boy growing up under the watchful eye of a brutal master in 1832, meets the mysterious Tall John, who introduces him to a magical science and also teaches him the meaning of freedom.

New York: Little, Brown, 2005, 232 p.

Booklist Review: Gr. 7-10. In his first YA book, acclaimed mystery writer Mosley tells a stirring story of escape from slavery in which sf and African American myth blend with the realism of plantation brutality and the courage of resistance. A boy today remembers himself as a 14-year-old slave named 47, living in Georgia in 1832. He recalls being chained, branded, and whipped until the runaway Tall John inspires him to fulfill his destiny and lead his people to freedom. Like the mythical figure High John the Conqueror, the runaway comes from “beyond Africa,” and he shows the boy the secrets of the universe. Above all, 47 takes in Tall John’s repeated lesson (“Neither master nor nigger be”), which is finally what sets him free. The magical realism allows for some plot contrivance, but Mosley brings the harsh facts and anguish very close, and the first-person narrative shows and tells how “slavery is the most unbelievable part of this whole story.”
-- Hazel Rochman (BookList, 04-15-2005, p1463)

School Library Journal Review: Gr 7-10???The intense, personal slave narrative of 14-year-old Forty-seven becomes allegorical when a mysterious runaway slave shows up at the Corinthian Plantation. Tall John, who believes there are no masters and no slaves, and who carries a yellow carpet bag of magical healing potions and futuristic devices, is both an inspiration and an enigma. He claims he has crossed galaxies and centuries and arrived by Sun Ship on Earth in 1832 to find the one chosen to continue the fight against the evil Calash. The brutal white overseer and the cruel slave owner are disguised Calash who must be defeated. Tall John inserts himself into Forty-seven's daily life and gradually cedes to him immortality and the power, confidence, and courage to confront the Calash to break the chains of slavery. With confidence, determination, and craft, Tall John becomes Forty-seven's alter ego, challenging him and inspiring him to see beyond slavery and fight for freedom. Time travel, shape-shifting, and intergalactic conflict add unusual, provocative elements to this story. And yet, well-drawn characters; lively dialogue filled with gritty, regional dialect; vivid descriptions; and poignant reflections ground it in harsh reality. Older readers will find the blend of realism, escapism, and science fiction intriguing.???Gerry Larson, Durham School of the Arts, NC --Gerry Larson (Reviewed June 1, 2005) (School Library Journal, vol 51, issue 6, p166)

Publishers Weekly Review: /* Starred Review */ This thought-provoking, genre-bending account of one slave's emancipation, Mosley's (Fear Itself) first book for young adults, makes for harrowing reading. The narrator, called simply by his number, 47, recalls his life as an enslaved teen on a Georgia plantation in 1832, occasionally interjecting the wisdom he has gleaned in the intervening years. At the "most likely" age of 14 ("Slaves... didn't have ages like the white people did," he explains), 47 is sent to the fields to pick cotton. His life in the slave quarters begins with having his number literally branded on his shoulder in a brutal scene, which palpably captures the cruelty of the period. Mosley's novel is more than a work of historical fiction, however???47 starts off by explaining that these events "happened over a hundred and seventy years ago," and hints that something supernatural is coming. It arrives in the person of "Tall John from beyond Africa," who masquerades as a runaway from a neighboring farm, but who is, in fact, an extraterrestrial searching the galaxy for 47. Those familiar with African-American folklore will recognize him as a variant of High John the Conqueror, a spirit who ultimately sets the slaves free. "Neither master nor nigger be," Tall John repeatedly tells 47, who must unlearn a lifetime of subservience in order to grasp the nature of freedom and its relationship to responsibility. Equal parts history and tall tale, this engaging story related by an endearing narrator is so full of dramatic tension that few readers will realize they're learning something, too. Ages 12-up. (May) --Staff (Reviewed May 16, 2005) (Publishers Weekly, vol 252, issue 20, p64)

Kirkus Reviews Forty-seven is the name and number of a 14-year-old slave working on Master Tobias's Georgia plantation in 1832. Forty-seven is also the narrator of Mosley's young-adult literature debut, still alive almost two centuries later to tell of his fated encounter with 3,000-year-old Tall John from "beyond Africa," who has arrived in a Sun Ship from planet Elle (where red and purple forests are populated by tiny, multi-colored men and women) in the guise of a young runaway slave. This boldly unusual blend of historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy has some powerful moments, such as when 47 is brutally branded by a sadistic fellow slave; and many heroic moments, such as when 47 and Tall John battle evil forces to keep them from mining the Earth's green powder and destroying the planet. Mostly, however, this is a flawed, didactic exploration of the nature of freedom, juxtaposing the brutality of 19th-century American slavery with the society of a faraway planet where skin color is irrelevant because "behind all existence there is one great mind." (Fiction. 12-16)
(Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2005)

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Forty-seven

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0316110353
0316016357 : Paperback - Juvenile
0307206610 : CD - Audio
1400099404 : Cassette - Audio

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Always outnumbered, always outgunned

Author: Mosley, Walter

After serving twenty-seven years in an Indiana prison for killing two people in a drunken rage, tough, brooding ex-convict Socrates Fortlow lives in a tiny apartment in an abandoned building in Watts, struggling to make sense of the anarchic violence in the world and in himself

Booklist Review: /*Starred Review*/ In these interconnected short stories about an aging black man, Socrates Fortlow, living in a makeshift two-room apartment in an abandoned Watts building, Mosley turns on its head the fundamental fantasy of the detective story, the notion that a single individual can unlock a mystery whose solution will, temporarily, restore order to a chaotic world. Unlike Easy Rawlins, the hero of Mosley's own acclaimed detective series, Socrates lacks the wherewithal to solve mysteries, to move at least reasonably easily through various levels of society. Socrates is an ex-con, having served 27 years of hard time for a double murder. He lives precariously, delivering groceries and attempting to quell the demons that threaten to stir his "rock-breaking hands" to still more violence. And yet, despite all that, Socrates, too, restores temporary order in a chaotic world. His triumphs are small, attenuated things, but they are chiseled from the unyielding bedrock of despair that surrounds him: a few vials of morphine, acquired from a pusher, to ease the pain of his friend's prostate cancer; a momentary safe haven for a teenage boy, at risk from the local gangbangers. Every detective hero, even one as cut from real cloth as Easy Rawlins, is finally a fantasy figure, somebody with the answers we lack; Socrates Fortlow, "always outnumbered, always outgunned," is a fantasy-free hero. These are often difficult stories to read; never sentimental, they are finally, one and all, about pain and how we live with it. Perhaps that's why those brief moments when Socrates eases someone else's pain deliver such a powerful sense of catharsis. Hard-hitting, unrelenting, poignant short fiction. ((Reviewed Aug. 1997)) -- Bill Ott

Publishers Weekly Review: Unveiling a new, bigger-than-life urban hero and a new series set in an updated version of Easy Rawlins's South Central Los Angeles, Mosley seems determined to confer on the mean streets of contemporary L.A. what filmmaker John Ford helped create for the American West: a gun-slinging mythology of street justice and a gritty, elegiac code of honor. Socrates Fortlow, an earthy ex-con with the stoic grandeur of an aging cowboy, who can "lift a forty-gallon trash can brimming with water and walk it a full city block," squats in a two-room apartment in Watts, tending a ramshackle garden and collecting bottles. Haunted by his 27 years in an Indiana prison and the murders he's committed with his own "rock-breaking hands," Socrates finds himself in a series of confrontations with a circle of friends and archetypal strangers (a thief, an adulterer and a Vietnam vet) with whom he frequently holds streetwise Platonic dialogues on ethics, remorse and retribution. He fraternizes with neighbors who, against the odds, have helped his community at the grass roots, like Right Burke, whose irascible wife maintains a rooming house for poor blacks, and Oscar Minette, who runs an independent bookstore. He teaches lessons about remorse and manhood to Daryl, a local teenager, finds a job bagging groceries in a more prosperous neighborhood and reluctantly helps the police catch a local arsonist. Fans of the intricately plotted Easy Rawlins novels may be surprised by the episodic format here, in which the linked stories are presented in short chapters with such didactic titles as "History" and "Double Standard" In creating such a maverick protagonist, Mosley has produced a not-quite novel that reads like a philosophical treatise, memorable less for any character insights or resolution than for its indelible vision of "poor men living on the edge of mayhem." BOMC and QPB selections. (Nov.) FYI: Mosley has written a screenplay for an HBO movie based on the novel.

Library Journal Review: Mosley introduces an unlikely hero in Socrates Fortlow, a rough-hewn yet thoughtful ex-con who, like his Greek namesake, is prone to asking big moral questions. Having spent 27 years in an Indiana prison and now living in Watts (in Los Angeles), Socrates is trying to redeem a misspent life while avoiding his own worst tendencies. He risks his safety to help a young boy struggling with his own conscience and tries to show mercy to an old friend dying of cancer. When he attempts to help a dog run over by a callous motorist, Socrates gives in to his anger and suddenly finds himself on the verge of returning to jail. While the novel can be a bit contrived or didactic in places, readers will find Socrates an intriguing enough character to overlook these flaws. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/97.]--Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, Mass.

Kirkus Reviews Mosley takes a break from his peerless Easy Rawlins series (Gone Fishin', 1997, etc.) for a cycle of non-mystery stories set in the same violent neighborhood of Watts. Like Easy, Socrates Fortlow has lived a long time with the dark side of life and himself. Thirty-five years ago, Socrates, addled with drink and lust, raped and killed a pair of acquaintances. Now, eight years after his endless prison sentence, he's living in a two-room apartment little better than his cell, and he still watches his back, avoids the Man, and assigns himself a grade at the end of every day. "Once you go to prison you belong there," he says of the brutalizing effect his term worked on him. But no matter how hard he tries, Socrates can't turn his back on life. A walk on the beach stirs memories and desires he'd rather not face; a tense face-off with a neighborhood adulterer awakens both his sharpest censure and his sharpest self-criticism. And he's not just a survivor; amid the allures of the flesh and the fear and anger he feels about being a black American, his life also lurches forward. He pushes the staff of the Bounty Supermarket to hire him as a grocery boxer; he takes in Darryl, a boy he can tell killed somebody else, too; he gets together with a WW II vet to expel a crack dealer from the neighborhood; he wrestles manfully with the question of whether he should rat a homicidal firebug out to the hated police. Whether he's remembering the bookstore intellectuals he used to hang around with or teaching Darryl to stand up to a gangbanger, Socrates constantly judges himself. As he writes to an old girlfriend: "I don't get into trouble even when it's not my fault." The elemental recurrence of fear and lust and rage are right out of Easy Rawlins, even if Socrates' story exhibits rather than extends Mosley's range.
(Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 1997)

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1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

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Other titles associated with this book:
Outnumbered always, always outgunned
Outgunned always, always outnumbered

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0393045390
0671014994 : Paperback
0787116467 : Cassette - Audio
0786212683 : Hardcover - Large Print
1590072022 : Cassette - Audio

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
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Bad Boy Brawly Brown: an Easy Rawlins mystery
by Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

Set in 1964, Easy is on a mission to lure Brawley Brown back to his mother. But not only is Brawley bad, he's big and not so easily swayed, especially since joining the Urban Revolutionary Party, a political group wary of strangers. Add to that a cache of stolen guns, secret government investigators, a payroll heist, several murders, problems with his son, and everybody lying about everything, plus his own crushing guilt over the apparent death of his best friend, and you've got Easy behind the eight ball once again.

Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 2002, 320 p.

Booklist Review: Mosley fans have been eagerly anticipating the return of Easy Rawlins, last seen in A Little Yellow Dog (1995) trying unsuccessfully to carve a separate peace for himself away from the violence of South Central L.A. in the mid-60s. That’s the situation again, as Rawlins is once more lured back into the street life when a friend needs help. Teenager Brawly Brown has left home and is running with the radical Urban Revolutionary Party. Easy quickly finds the boy, but he is just as quickly caught up in the murder of one of the party’s leaders. There is a poignant world-weariness to Rawlins here. He responds to “the gruff bark of the American Negro’s soul,” yet he also sees Brawly as part of an “army of young fools . . . fighting and dying for ideas they barely understand, for rights they never possessed, for beliefs based on lies.” This episode replays the themes and recaptures the mood of the previous installment more than we’ve come to expect from the constantly evolving Rawlins series, but it nevertheless stands on its own as a powerful human drama and a vividly re-created historical moment .
(Reviewed May 1, 2002) -- Bill Ott

School Library Journal Review: Adult/High School?Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins has accomplished many of his goals through hard work and perseverance, and in spite of being a black man in a white-dominated world. When Alva Torres needs help to locate her son, Brawly, Easy gladly steps in as unofficial private eye. The young man turns out to be mixed up with a radical political group, and Easy tries to find a way to ease Brawly and himself out of the mess. After two men are murdered and the police search for everyone with a connection to either death, Easy comes up with a violent answer that saves Brawly's life and covers his own tracks. Mosley weaves together the racial tensions felt in 1964 Los Angeles with the complex threads of Easy's life. Rawlins's multilayered personality and history provide the character's mental and physical drive, which in turn drives the plot. Supporting characters bring their own depth and substance and give readers additional insight into the period. A fine balance of historical fiction, murder mystery, and character study, this novel offers action and a lot of thoughtful material.?Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA (Reviewed November 1, 2002) (School Library Journal, vol 48, issue 11, p195)

Publishers Weekly Review: /* Starred Review */ Finally. Five years after the last taste (1997's Gone Fishin') and six years after the last full meal (1996's A Little Yellow Dog), Easy Rawlins makes a very welcome return. Now 44 years old, Easy no longer makes a living from doing people "favors." Now he owns a house, works for the Board of Education in Los Angeles and is father to a teenage son, Jesus, and a young daughter, Feather. It's 1964, and while some things have changed, the process is slow and uncertain. Too slow for some, including Brawly Brown, the son of Alva, the girlfriend of Easy's friend, John. Hotheaded Brawly has become involved with a group calling itself the Urban Revolutionary Party, and John and Alva fear the group's unspoken aim is violence and revenge. Friendship and loyalty being still sacred to Easy, he agrees, as a favor, to try to locate and talk to Brawly. As usual, Easy's path is not easy. When a body surfaces, Easy finds himself in the middle of a vicious puzzle where lives are cheap and death the easiest solution. As always, Mosley illuminates time and place with a precision few writers can match whatever genre they choose. He also delivers a rousing good story and continues to captivate with characters readers have grown to love, including the now "dead" Mouse, who still plays an important role in Easy's chronicle. Agent, Gloria Loomis. (One-day laydown July 2)
— Staff (Reviewed June 17, 2002) (Publishers Weekly, vol 249, issue 24, p45)

Library Journal Review: This latest outing in Mosley's ongoing detective series (Devil in a Blue Dress) could be subtitled Easy Rawlins's Family Values, as the concept of family—whether the one you are born into or the one you choose for yourself—echoes throughout. Set in 1964, the core of the plot finds Easy on a mission to lure the title character back to his mother. But not only is Brawley bad, he's big and not so easily swayed, especially since joining the Urban Revolutionary Party, a political group wary of strangers. Add to that a cache of stolen guns, secret government investigators, a payroll heist, several murders, problems with his son, and everybody lying about everything, plus his own crushing guilt over the apparent death of his best friend, and you've got Easy behind the eight ball once again. The author continues to probe the African American experience, and while a crime is at the heart of this book, its soul lies in deeper issues. Nonetheless, Mosley is always a good read. Recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ3/15/02.]—Michael Rogers, "Library Journal" (Reviewed May 15, 2002) (Library Journal, vol 127, issue 9, p130)

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ In a rare slowing of his usual leaps forward in time, Mosley, who's chronicled the adventures of reluctant Watts detective Ezekiel Rawlins from 1948 (Devil in a Blue Dress, 1990) to 1963 (A Little Yellow Dog, 1996), edges forward only three months to tell the story of Easy's search for Brawly Brown, the hulking young man who ran away from his mother, Alva Torres, smack into trouble. He's been drawn into the Urban Revolutionary Party, a black-power group that advocates either cultural unity (according to URP director Xavier Bodan and secretary Tina Montes) or armed insurrection (according to LAPD Detective Vincent Knorr, one of the D-squad stalwarts charged with bringing the party down). Even before he meets these antagonists, however, Easy's already followed Brawly into trouble when his visit to Alva's cousin, Isolda Moore, leaves him standing over the cooling corpse of Brawly's father, lying dead in Isolda's doorway. The evidence, of course, points to the son who'd threatened his old man. But Mosley uses this central conflict to focus a whole seething world of trouble, from Easy's guilt over the death of his fearless, violent friend Mouse to his heroic efforts to keep his family together to his eternal battles with the cops who are railroading him once more.
"Where I come from they don't have dark-skinned private detectives," says Easy in the finest rationale ever proposed for the amateur sleuth. Helping his brothers only because nobody else will, he returns from his six-year sabbatical more complex and compelling than ever before: a hero for his time and ours.
(Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2002)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

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ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0316073016
0446612316 : Paperback - Mass Market
1559277157 : CD - Audio
1559277149 : Cassette - Audio
1559277130 : Cassette - Audio
1410401693 : Paperback - Large Print
078624593X : Hardcover - Large Print
0736686495 : Cassette - Audio
060631041X : DEMCO Turtleback
1417651350 : Glued Binding

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• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
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• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20020420
• TID: 068722

Black Betty

Author: Mosley, Walter

In the Los Angeles of the early 1960s, Easy Rawlins looks for a woman he had known in Houston.

Booklist Review: /*STARRED REVIEW*/ It's summertime 1961, and the livin' isn't so easy for Easy Rawlins. His real-estate deals--kept secret to avoid the reprisals that a black landlord in postwar Los Angeles might expect from both black friends and white enemies--have mostly gone bad, his wife has left, and he's attempting to raise two kids on his own. Easy needs money bad, so when a white private eye offers two grand to help find Betty Eady, a name from Easy's distant past, he takes the job. Meanwhile, the lethal killer Mouse, Easy's oldest friend, is out of jail and looking for the man who set him up. As in the three previous installments in Mosley's acclaimed series, the case at hand is never really the center of attention. While Mosley develops a plot and generates tension as well as anyone working in crime fiction, he has always had bigger fish to fry. As we've watched Easy try to make a life for himself and his loved ones in South Central L.A. from World War II onward, we've witnessed the rise and fall of hope in the black community. As the civil rights movement gains momentum and Martin Luther King, Jr., comes to prominence on the national scale, Easy feels something very different on the streets: "I realized that I'd always be surrounded by violence and insanity. I saw it everywhere. . . . It was even in me. That feeling of anger, wrapped tight under my skin, in my hands. And it was getting worse." Just as he did with the war and the McCarthy era, Mosley gives us a recognizable moment in American history viewed through the eyes of a single black man. This perspective, rare in crime fiction, vivifies not only the black experience but the larger event as well. Here we feel the hot winds that would eventually ignite the Watts riots not as abstract issues in race relations, but as emotions in the hearts of individuals we have come to know and care about. In Easy's bitterness and in the bone-weary fatigue with which he greets each new act of senseless violence--whether the weapon is a white cop's fists or Mouse's Colt-.45--we feel the ineffable sadness that has come to envelop our urban landscape. ((Reviewed May 1, 1994)) -- Bill Ott

Publishers Weekly Review: It ain't easy being Easy. Especially not now, as Mosley ( White Butterfly ) brings his much-admired, reluctant L.A. sleuth, Easy Rawlins, to the cusp of the 1960s without his wife and daughter, his real estate riches or the hopes and ambitions that fueled his earlier years. Easy must grab at the $400 he's offered to locate Elizabeth Eady, a missing housekeeper who several years and a few lifetimes away was "Black Betty," a sensual presence on the Houston streets where he grew up. Easy understands that Betty (". . . a great shark of a woman. Men died in her wake") has a mythical importance to him, but he doesn't know why the rich and dysfunctional California family she recently worked for is offering so much money to find her, or why her brother Marlon is also missing--and likely dead, given the spilled blood found in his place. Easy isn't always able to concentrate on the case. His pal Mouse, just out of the slammer, wants help finding the guy who sold him out to the cops; all the rage Mouse acts unthinkingly on, Easy feels too and struggles to contain. In measured, quietly emotive prose, Mosley moves his work away from conventional genre fiction, tinkering, abandoning and later returning to the mystery element. Nevertheless, the solution fully satisfies as Easy opts for smaller victories--not the white man's riches, but maybe a few bucks in his pocket and some time with the two adopted kids that now constitute his family. Author tour. (June)

Library Journal Review: Mosley's distinctive black investigator, Easy Rawlins, has moved from Watts to West L.A. with his two adopted children, but trouble still follows him. Hired to locate a sultry female acquaintance from his early days in Houston, Easy searches for her gambler brother and questions her Beverly Hills employer, unwittingly provoking racist police harassment. Meanwhile, friend Raymond (``Mouse'') has been released from prison and vows revenge on the snitch who put him there. Mosley, as usual, describes a historically correct ethos in deft, literate prose. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/94.]

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ It's 1961, and Easy Rawlins has lost most of what he had five years ago in White Butterfly (1992). Not only has his wife walked out with his daughter, but his real estate investments have left him broke, and he's moved out of his own building to a rental in West LA, where shamus Saul Lynx comes to ask him to find aging mantrap Elizabeth Eady, aka Black Betty. Easy goes looking for Betty's gambling brother Marion, but finds nothing more of him than a bloody molar and a fat check from imperious Sarah Clarice Cain, daughter of the late, rich, unlamented Albert Cain. Why is Sarah so desperate to find Betty, and how is her disappearance tied to the police investigation of Albert's death? While he's pondering these questions, Easy finds big problems on his own doorstep. His investment in Freedom's Plaza is jeopardized by a smooth supermarket king who doesn't care for African-American competition; and his homicidal friend Mouse, sprung from jail after five years for manslaughter, is determined to identify and kill the witness who sent him there. It's high time the Easy Rawlins saga was recognized for the remarkable achievement it is: a snapshot social history of the black experience in postwar LA. This latest installment, teeming with violence, bitterness, and compassion, is Mosley's finest work yet.
(Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 1994)

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Other titles associated with this book:
Betty Black

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0393036448
0671884271 : Paperback - Mass Market
0743451783 : Paperback
067101983X : Paperback
1559277211 : CD - Audio
1559272902 : Cassette - Audio
0786203234 : Hardcover - Large Print
155927302X : Cassette - Audio

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• American Historical Fiction: An Annotated Guide to Novels for Adults and Young Adults, published by Oryx Press
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
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• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046382

Blue light: a novel

Author: Mosley, Walter

When several people are struck by a blue light, they evolve into a superhuman race that tries to spread its message of evolution and higher purpose to the rest of the world, in a speculative novel about the ultimate purpose of the human race

Booklist Review: In the high 1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area, rays of blue light fall to earth. Any creature touched by them is evolutionarily catapulted to higher planes of understanding. The light kills most humbler critters that it strikes and plenty of humans, too. But a charismatic, womanizing hippie is transformed into the prophetic leader of the Close Congregation, which includes some fellow blue lighters, and a dying ex-con is revitalized as the Gray Man, capable of dismembering a person with his bare hands. The Gray Man sets out to eliminate good blue lighters, and by a third of the way through this yarn, he has offed the prophet. This is not curtains for the good guys, because grad-school dropout Chance has picked up the blue light's effects secondarily. Most of this dark fantasy, narrated by Chance (semi-omnisciently, because, like all blue lighters, he can learn of others' experiences by drinking their blood) is a chase, as the Gray Man inexorably carries out his mission. There is a showdown in which the Gray Man gets his, but, like Ishmael, Chance is the only apparent survivor, and he is committed to a state mental hospital, where he languishes to this day. Mystery writer Mosley should leave this kind of thing to Dean Koontz, and take it easy--Easy Rawlins, that is--again. ((Reviewed September 1, 1998)) -- Ray Olson

Publishers Weekly Review: You have to admire Mosley: with a gilt-edged brand-name character (Easy Rawlins)in his locker, he still can't resist venturing off in new directions. Sometimes his effort to break new ground works beautifully, as in RL's Dream; sometimes it's an interesting misfire, as in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned.This time, however, it seems plain misguided. Blue Light is an odd mixture of science fiction and inspirational fable about a sort of cosmic ray that enters into a handful of people, giving them superhuman faculties, and the struggle some of these ultra-evolved folk have with the spirit of Death, who has also been granted special powers. Beginning in Berkeley during the hippie love days (well observed, as Mosley's West Coast scenes always are) and eventually migrating into the deep forests of the Sierra, where a group of "blues" create a sort of idyllic pastoral retreat, the story is mostly told from the viewpoint of Chance, a half-breed drifter. One of its more original aspects is that several of the characters, enacting roles similar to those often given by other writers to Native American shamans and seers, are black. There are some jolting scenes of sexuality and violence, and some arresting images, like the vocalizing trees experienced by the "blues"; but the biology is insufficiently imagined, the time sequence is sometimes confusing and a sort of vague poesy that is a far cry from Mosley's typically sinewy prose is the predominant style. Time-Warner audio; author tour. (Nov.)

Library Journal Review: Mosley here takes a wide detour from his Easy Rawlins series (e.g., A Little Yellow Dog, LJ 6/15/98) with a somewhat puzzling novel that transcends all genres. The plot follows a large group of strangers who are touched by a mysterious blue light from space. The "blues" and "half blues" become superhuman in various ways, some physically, others mentally. While that sounds very sf-ish, there are also elements of fantasy and horror as one blue, who is essentially the personification of death, wages war against the others, who are forced to hide in a magical forest in Northern California. Sound strange? It is, but it's also worthwhile. Mosley offers many gender twists as the men become more philosophical and the women, especially one child who quickly morphs into an Amazonian warrior, are the more physically aggressive. Race also loses meaning as the blues and half blues, whites and blacks, adults and children, criminals and cops, and teachers and fools live in harmony. This is going to be a great leap of faith for Mosley fans, but those who make it will be rewarded with a beautifully written, deeply spiritual novel. Recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/98.]--Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"

Kirkus Reviews Mosley leaves the Watts of Easy Rawlins and Socrates Fortlow (Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, 1997) far behind in this extravagant futuristic fantasy of a lucky few San Francisco natives transformed virtually into a new species by rays of unearthly blue light. When the astral visitation comes, it turns elderly housewife Eileen Mattel into a tower of strength, Berkeley dropout Ordƒ, a.k.a. William T. Portman, into a millennial prophet, spouse-swapper Claudia Zimmerman into a love goddess, and Claudia's dog Max into a being far wiser and nobler than any human. Even marauding biker Winch Fargo, who caught only the very end of the light show, and Lester Foote, a.k.a. Chance, a half-white, half-black Bay Area historian whose blood is mingled with Ordƒ's, receive breathtaking new powers. If Mosley's premise sounds like the John Travolta film Phenomenon writ large, however, it's both darkened and broadened by the shadow of the impending battle between the Blues and their nemesis, Gray Redstar, nƒ Horace LaFontaine, a hideous hybrid of blue strength and death's fury. Once the Blues, joined by such demi-Blues as Folsom Prison warden Gerin Reed and Ordƒ's miraculously gifted daughter Alacrity, retreat into the surrounding woods and, ringed round by killer butterflies and sentient redwoods touched by the light, give themselves over to spiritual and carnal love, Mosley's fantasy develops distinct superhero overtones ("Alacrity was the greatest warrior in the history of the world. She was bold and kindhearted, savage and ruthless"). At the same time, the story, already heavily burdened with Chance's oracular meditations on history, racial difference, and the intertwining of violence and love, begins to drag, as months turns into Grayless years, and to stagger under the weight of its apocalyptic premise, whose every manifestation demands a new set of superlatives. The finale is likely to leave readers as unsatisfied as Chance. The result is an ambitious mess, inventive and visionary as Mosley's greatest admirers might wish, but torn between windy prophecy and comic-book heroics.
(Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1998)

Features about this author or title:

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1. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> New York Times Notable Books -> Fiction and Poetry -> 1998

2. Explore Fiction - Adult -> Explore Fiction -> Science Fiction -> African-American Science Fiction

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0316570982
0446606928 : Paperback - Mass Market
1570426325 : Cassette - Audio
1568956398 : Hardcover
0613212355 : Glued Binding
185242611X : Paperback

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• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
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• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046383

Cinnamon kiss
Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

Facing unprecedented financial troubles when his daughter requires a medical treatment, Easy Rawlins takes a job tracking down a missing attorney and legal assistant, but the assignment proves more complicated than anticipated.

New York: Little, Brown, c2005, 320 p.

Booklist Review: Mosley’s long march through the 1960s continues as Easy Rawlins, now in his forties, finds himself thrust into multiple family crises. His daughter, Feather, has contracted a rare blood disease and is likely to die unless Easy can find a way to pay for treatment at a Swiss hospital. His lethal but loyal friend Mouse has just the ticket--an armored-car holdup--but Easy, determined to bring some stability to his life, opts instead to help a fellow sleuth track a vanished lawyer and his beautiful assistant, Cinnamon Cargill. The armored-car job might have been a wiser choice. Soon Easy has nothing but trouble: dead bodies turning up wherever he goes, a stone killer on his trail, and a potentially scandalous plot involving decades-old dealings with the Nazis. The trail takes Easy from L.A. to San Francisco and affords him his first bemused look at the burgeoning counterculture in Berkeley and Haight-Ashbury. Mosley’s justly celebrated series typically juxtaposes human drama against a recognizable historical moment (last year’s Little Scarlet took place during the Watts riots), revealing what history feels like from the perspective of an individual African American man. This time the historical moment is less vivid--the hippie encounters are mostly peripheral--but the human drama is more highly charged than ever. Readers accustomed to the aggressive interaction between history and character may feel less engaged this time, but the melancholic, inward-turning Easy who emerges here offers his own multidimensional rewards. Like the best crime series, the Rawlins novels continue to evolve in surprising ways.
-- Bill Ott (BookList, 06-01-2005, p1712)

Publishers Weekly Review: /* Starred Review */ As shown in the superb 10th entry in Mosley's Easy Rawlins series (Devil in a Blue Dress, etc.), Easy's progress is never smooth and his achievements (responsible job, son and daughter both flowering, loving woman in his house, friends and even a grudging respect from local authorities) always fragile. Now, at the height of the Vietnam War era, it all threatens to collapse. Daughter Feather's mysterious illness is the proximate cause, and only an expensive Swiss clinic offers hope. Needing the nearly impossible sum of $35,000, Easy considers assisting his dangerous pal, Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, with a robbery. But he decides instead to try his luck on a missing persons job brokered by white friend and PI Saul Lynx. Easy leaves Los Angeles for San Francisco, where his new employer puts him on the trail of a wealthy and eccentric lawyer and the lawyer's exotic lover, a girl known as Cinnamon, who have disappeared. As ever, Mosley is able to capture the era???hippies, Watts, communes???in brief strokes that provide a brilliant background to Easy's search for solutions to both a convoluted mystery and complex personal problems. Agent, Gloria Loomis. 10-city author tour. (Sept.) --Staff (Reviewed July 11, 2005) (Publishers Weekly, vol 252, issue 27, p66)

Library Journal Review: This latest entry in Mosley's Easy Rawlins series offers much of what can be found in the earlier novels: a hard-boiled detective plot; Rawlins's black existentialism; an array of strange, exotic characters (namely, femme fatales all pining for Rawlins); detailed locales in South Central L.A.; equally detailed descriptions of food; and occasional commentary on the state of race relations in America. Yet because it is set in 1966, this work offers a bit more: Rawlins must now deal with evolving and more ambiguous racial attitudes. The plot is fairly straightforward; desperate to obtain money for an expensive treatment for his adopted daughter's unnamed but potentially fatal blood disease, Rawlins takes a leave from his job as head custodian at a public school and agrees to look for a missing woman???and some embarrassing documents. His search takes him first to San Francisco (where the manifestation of the Sixties counterculture are evident) and then back to L.A. Mosley has never been a great literary stylist, but he's a good writer of detective fiction, and his recurring characters continue to have appeal. Recommended for all public libraries and for academic libraries where interest warrants. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/05.]???Roger A. Berger, Everett Community Coll., WA --Roger A. Berger (Reviewed August 15, 2005) (Library Journal, vol 130, issue 13, p60)

Kirkus Reviews 1966. Watts has stopped burning, but it's no safer for Easy Rawlins, on the trail of some mysterious documents that leave death in their wake.

A man will do things he never thought he would when his little girl is sick, and Easy's considering joining his friend Mouse Alexander for a holdup so that he can finance medical treatment for his ailing daughter Feather. Then his friend Saul Lynx offers him a job that may keep him afloat: tracking down storefront attorney Axel Bowers and his servant Philomena (Cinnamon) Cargill, together with a briefcase full of unspecified papers, for San Francisco shamus Robert E. Lee, who's acting on behalf of an anonymous client. Knowing that nobody pays a black man $10,000 without good reason, Easy expects trouble and treachery. He's not surprised when he learns that Bowers is dead and the documents he's been sent to retrieve include bearer bonds and a letter with an ugly pedigree that goes back to WWII. But he's not prepared for the stone killer who suddenly pops up behind him, or for the coolly manipulative way Cinnamon uses sex to get whatever she wants, or for the bad blood between Bobby Lee and Maya Adamant, his lieutenant. And he's certainly not prepared for the emotional storm the case will stir up in his own breast.

Lacks the searing intensity of Little Scarlet (2004), but still as rich and tightly wound as you'd expect from Mosley.
(Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2005)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

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0316073024
0446612723 : Paperback - Mass Market
1594830355 : CD - Audio
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• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
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• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
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• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20050720
• TID: 135130

Devil in a blue dress

Author: Mosley, Walter

Easy Rawlins is fired from his factory job in 1948 and after working for a mobster, he finds that he has skills as an investigator.

Booklist Review: Los Angeles in the 1940s remains a popular setting for historically minded mystery writers. Stuart Kaminsky has been mining the territory for years, and, more recently, James Ellroy has staked his own claim, especially with L.A. Confidential. Walter Mosley and his creation, Easy Rawlins, now join the parade but with several significant differences. Rawlins is a black sleuth, so we get to see a very different side of L.A.--Watts instead of Beverly Hills, after-hours jazz clubs rather than art deco movie-star haunts. Rawlins is a reluctant detective, but after being fired from his machinist job for talking back to the foreman, he agrees to help find a mysterious white woman in a blue dress. In a plot reminiscent of the film Chinatown, Rawlins soon finds himself thrashing about in a quagmire of murder, cover-up, and corruption that extends from bootleg whiskey salesmen to high-level government officials. Race relations in the forties is a persistent theme, but Mosley never preaches. This is an impressive debut by a writer who puts a refreshing spin on the conventions of the genre. --

Publishers Weekly Review: This jaunty crime novel, set in L.A. in 1948, introduces Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, a recently laid-off mechanic who is young, black and--but for the need to meet the mortgage on his new house--a most reluctant sleuth. Easy hails originally from the tough Fifth Ward in Houston; he served his country, landing on the Normandy Beach. He knows racism firsthand and seeing too many white men in one day unnerves him. But a white businessman, Dewitt Albright, engages Easy to locate a beautiful French woman named Daphne Monet who has a "predilection for the company of negroes." She also has $30,000 of someone else's money. Easy becomes entangled in a chain of events that takes him to bar after bar to meet a range of characters, most of whom are seeking their own advantages in the pursuit of Daphne. With bodies piling up, there is no turning back for Easy, as he is dogged by brutish white cops and a few "brothers" none too friendly. The language is hard-boiled ("Somewhere between the foo young and the check I decided to cut my losses") and the portrait of black city life gritty and real. But the first-person narrative, which hurtles along with improbable transitions and sketchy psychological portraits, leaves the reader winded rather than exhilarated at the book's predictable conclusion. 25,000 first printing; $25,000 ad/promo; movie rights to Reuben Cannon ; Mysterious Book Club and QPB selections. (July)

Library Journal Review: Ezekiel ``Easy'' Rawlins, a young, tough black veteran living in 1948 Los Angeles, only wants respect and enough money to pay his mortgage. When fired from his factory job, however, he undertakes some paid errands for a shady white mobster who wishes to locate a light-haired, blue-eyed beauty. As Easy plumbs his usual hangouts for clues, he relays information to the mobster, runs afoul of the police, meets the mysterious woman, discovers a murder, then investigates in self-defense. An unusually refreshing protagonist, slated for further adventure, talented prose, and evocative, realistic descriptions of speech, manners, and social life make this an exceptional and welcome addition.

Kirkus Reviews Raymond Chandler meets Richard Wright in this not-quite-successful first novel set in 1948 L.A. Here, low-key black detective Easy Rawlins, fired from his job at a defense plant, agrees to locate femme fatale Daphne Monet for white gangster DeWitt Albright--and of course Finds more than he bargained for. Although he's the hero of a detective novel, Easy is no detective: his preferred method of investigation is to circulate among his friends--bartender Joppy (who recommends him for the job), boxer-bouncer Junior Fornay, philosophical Odell Jones, sultry Coretta James, and unpredictably violent Raymond (Mouse) Alexander--mentioning Daphne until he links her to hijacker Frank (Knifehand) Green, and then looking for Green with a deal offered by Todd Carter, the strait-laced white banker Daphne ran out on. As Easy moves through his hazy, gritty postwar hell buying drinks and asking questions, the rest of the cast predictably begins to kill each other off and come after Easy, setting the stage for a climactic confrontation between Daphne and Easy--but Daphne's revelations aren't really worth the wait. Good dialogue and some tensely effective scenes--the air crackles whenever Easy goes up against a white man--don't add up to serious competition for Chandler or Wright. Better wait for the movie, or hope for more incisive plotting in the promised sequel.
(Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1990)

Features about this author or title:

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2. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

3. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Mysteries and Thrillers -> Dagger Awards -> New Blood Dagger Award (Best First Crime Novel)

4. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Mysteries and Thrillers -> Shamus Award -> Best First P.I. Novel

Author Web Sites:
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ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0393028542
0671511424 : Paperback - Mass Market
0743451791 : Paperback
1559277181 : CD - Audio
1559272384 : Cassette - Audio
1559272694 : Cassette - Audio
1560547227 : Hardcover - Large Print
1417651369 : Glued Binding
0671740504 : Paperback - Mass Market

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• American Historical Fiction: An Annotated Guide to Novels for Adults and Young Adults, published by Oryx Press
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
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• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046384

Fear itself: a mystery
by Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

Knowing a missing man to be innocent of the murder charge levied against him, Paris Minton hires former sheriff Jefferson Hill to investigate, but when the sheriff goes missing as well, Minton enlists Fearless Jones for the case.

Boston: Little, Brown, 2003, 320 p.

Booklist Review: There's a fun conceit in the name of Mosley's Fearless Jones series: its namesake is not the protagonist but the protagonist's best friend. Simplifying the stability-versus-chaos dichotomy of Easy Rawlins and his friend Mouse (heroes of Mosley's most popular series), narrator Paris Minton is the brains to Fearless' brawn. Even more interesting, the deadly ex-soldier Fearless is good-natured and generous, while Paris, a scrawny bookseller and self-admitted coward, can be abrasive and self-serving. In the second installment, a nighttime knock on the door begins a complicated caper that starts with a missing person and ends with a half-dozen parties fighting over a valuable book. Fear Itself is infused with Mosley's typical thoughtfulness and telling details, although it's not quite as successful as his previous mysteries. Readers who love Mosley for his politics, settings, and characters may feel stinted by the generous plot machinations, which unfold largely in dialogue and employ so many characters that we don't get to know many of them well. And there's a central paradox that's addressed but not solved: if Paris is such a scaredy-cat, why does he keep plunging further into danger? After a slow beginning, the ending just misses being great when a last twist softens what would have been a perfect noir judgment on Paris. Not Mosley's best, but still plenty good.
(Reviewed May 15, 2003) -- Keir Graff

Publishers Weekly Review: In this eagerly anticipated follow-up to Fearless Jones (2001), Watts bookstore owner Paris Minton and the dangerous but principled Fearless Jones tread the familiar territory mapped so successfully by Mosley's original detecting duo, Easy Rawlins and Raymond "Mouse" Alexander. The author depicts 1950s Los Angeles with his usual unerring accuracy, but a somewhat different dynamic drives his heroes. When Fearless drags the reluctant Paris into helping him look for Kit Mitchell (aka the Watermelon Man), their quest turns quickly murderous. Timid bookworm Paris gets caught in a deadly game of hide-and-seek whose players deal in lead, money and lies and include members of the fractured and fractious family of millionaire black businesswoman Winifred L. Fine. Neither Fearless nor Paris is sure who or what the various seekers are after—the missing Mitchell, a fabulous emerald pendant or a family diary—only that it's valued more than the lives lost trying to find it. A desire to aid his friend Fearless initially motivates Paris, but his journey becomes a voyage of self-discovery. While Paris possesses a narrative voice that's more literate and middle-class than that of the street-smart Easy, it should still resonate with Mosley's legions of fans. (July 2)
— Staff (Reviewed June 16, 2003) (Publishers Weekly, vol 250, issue 24, p54)

Library Journal Review: /* Starred Review */ It is a rare thing for an author to release three books in a year's time and to have each outgun its predecessor. Coming on the heels of Bad Boy Brawley Brown(2002) and Six Easy Pieces(2003), Mosley vaults from his bread-and-butter "Easy Rawlins" mysteries to this second outing in the promising "Fearless Jones" series. Set in 1955 Los Angeles, this quick-paced thriller finds Fearless and compatriot Paris Minton, the story's narrator, searching for a friend's missing husband. That seemingly simple task rapidly escalates into a case of multiple murders, blackmail, and a quest for a priceless heirloom that makes this Mosley's answer to The Maltese Falcon. Minton, a used-book dealer by trade and the combo's brains, is refreshing in that the dangers typically ignored by steely nerved investigators petrify him. Fearless, the brawn—and heart—is as dangerous as Rawlins's sociopathic sidekick, Mouse, minus the homicidal tendencies. Fearless and Paris make a grand duo who can give Easy and Mouse a run for their money. You won't be able to turn the pages fast enough while hoping it never ends. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/03.]—Michael Rogers, "Library Journal" (Reviewed June 15, 2003) (Library Journal, vol 128, issue 11, p106)

Kirkus Reviews Inoffensive bookseller Paris Minton's friend Fearless Jones drags him from the safety of his shop into more trouble—big, big trouble—in 1955 Watts.

Leora Hartman wants Fearless to track down his own employer, watermelon salesman Kit Mitchell, the father of her son, who's left his home with no forwarding address. But the inquiries Fearless enlists Paris to make are complicated by three dangers. First, Kit's vanishing act is only the beginning of a case that will feature the disappearance of some much more important people and claim Kit's life along with those of a brother and sister killed in separate but equally grisly incidents. Second, Paris and Fearless will soon be playing out of their league, caught in the crossfire between two of LA's heaviest hitters—cosmetics queen Winifred L. Fine and crafty developer Maestro Wexler—and inevitably attracting the less-than-cordial interest of the LAPD. Third, all the parties Paris talks to, from Leora Hartman to Winifred L. Fine, lie to protect their own interests, turn his quest to their advantage, or hide their involvement in a chain of violence and betrayal that stretches all the way back to a priceless Fine family diary begun by a slave 300 years ago.

Paris (Fearless Jones, 2001) ends by wrapping up a mystery with perhaps a dozen too many tangles, accepting himself as a killer, and guaranteeing that no matter how well he succeeds in his errands to the powerful and fearsome, he'll never get rich.
(Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2003)

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2. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Mysteries and Thrillers -> New York Times Notable Books -> Mysteries -> 2003

Author Web Sites:
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0316591122
0446610135 : Paperback - Mass Market
1586215086 : Cassette - Audio
1586215094 : CD - Audio
0786255889 : Hardcover - Large Print
1594832722 : CD - Audio

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
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• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20030620
• TID: 119331

Fear of the dark
Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

The arrival of his lowlife cousin, Ulysses S. "Useless" Grant, spells trouble for Paris Minton and his friend, Fearless Jones, as they become embroiled in a bizarre case involving mysterious women, desperate blackmail victims, cheating business partners,and murder.

New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2006, 320 p.

Publishers Weekly Review: Though the prose is a bit rough in spots, Mosley's third outing for L.A. bookseller Paris Minton and the intrepid Fearless Jones is as entertaining as its predecessors, Fearless Jones and Fear Itself. Trouble comes to Paris's door in the form of his cousin Ulysses "Useless" S. Grant IV," who needs help after getting mixed up in a scheme that has gotten totally out of hand. Despite refusing to even let Useless cross his threshold, Paris is drawn, violently, into the fray. Mosley isn't afraid to cast his characters in heroic molds and does so explicitly when Paris recalls Bullfinch'sMythology and muses: "Fearless was the hero, I was the hero's companion, Useless was the mischievous trickster." As in any good heroic adventure, Fearless and Paris face a variety of monsters, traps, sirens and other temptations. Mosley's talent for sketching memorable minor characters of every hue ("buttery brown," "copper," "brick," "olive with a hint of lemon") is fully evident, while his reading of the racial temperature of the 1950s is as dead-on as ever. (Sept.) --Staff (Reviewed July 31, 2006) (Publishers Weekly, vol 253, issue 30, p47)

Kirkus Reviews Watts, 1956. Time for another 15 rounds of unsought violence for bookseller Paris Minton and his friend Fearless Jones.

Surrounded by men—and quite a few women—who think they're tough, Paris (Fear Itself, 2003, etc.) considers himself a coward. He's been afraid of the dark ever since the April Fool's night when he spent five hours locked in a crawl space beneath his bookstore with the cooling corpse of his lover Jessa Brown's ex-boyfriend Tiny Bobchek, shot through the head. Burying Tiny in a shallow grave with the help of Fearless and legendary killer and storyteller Van Cleave takes the heat off Paris but doesn't rescue him from the danger brought by another visitor: Paris's cousin Ulysses S. Grant IV, more aptly known as Useless. Realizing that the apple of his Aunt Three Hearts' eye has graduated from theft to large-scale blackmail, Paris reluctantly enlists the help of Fearless and a dozen more questionable allies in tracking down the head blackmailers before the mounting pile of casualties includes him. It's an unlikely task for Paris, who claims to be always afraid, and Fearless, who may be incapable of doing long division.

Luckily, the clouds obscuring the labyrinthine plot frequently lift to reveal the clarity of Paris's wisdom, as when he observes that kindly Fearless constantly fights only because "we were poor and we were black and so we either fought or we lost ground."
(Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2006)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

Author Web Sites:
1. Walter Mosley : Features biographical and bibliographical information on Mosley.
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0316734586
1594835721 : CD - Audio
078629146X : Hardcover - Large Print

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• TID: 147232

Fearless Jones: a novel
Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

Paris Minton's world is turned upside down when a woman named Elana Love walks into his bookstore and asks a few questions. Within the next 24 hous, Paris is beaten up, made love to, shot at, robbed and his bookstore burned to the ground. He's in so much trouble he gets his friend Fearless Jones out of jail because this man knows violence better than any man should.

Boston: Little, Brown, c2001, 312 p.

Booklist Review: What appears at first blush to be a new series from Walter Mosley is, in fact, an intriguing extension of his Easy Rawlins’ novels. Just as Faulkner switched the focus of his Yoknapatawpha stories from family to family, so Mosley now gives us another set of characters living in Watts in the 1950s. Bookstore owner Paris Minton, like Easy, is a fairly recent arrival in Los Angeles, and he yearns for the sense of community he felt in his all-black southern town. Those yearnings are especially poignant here, as Paris finds himself homeless after his used bookstore (he lives in the back) is burned down. When it becomes clear that whoever torched the store would like to finish the job by getting rid of the owner, Paris, no man of action, needs the help of his war-hero friend, Fearless Jones. The pair quickly finds themselves forced to navigate in uncharted territory filled with white people trying to get their hands on stolen money. The parallels to the Rawlins’ novels--Paris is a slightly more bookish Easy, while Fearless suggests a sweeter but equally lethal Mouse--never feel repetitive but, instead, add depth and resonance to the series, as Mosley views his larger theme of race relations in postwar Los Angeles from a slightly new perspective.
(Reviewed May 1, 2001) -- Bill Ott

School Library Journal Review: After forays into sf (Blue Light, LJ 10/1/98) and short fiction (Walkin' the Dog, LJ 8/99), Mosley returns to mystery a move that is fairly certain to please fans, although with each new detective novel he seems more and more set in his own formula. Here, instead of Easy Rawlins, the upwardly aspiring World War II veteran and informal private detective, and his sociopathic friend Mouse Alexander, Mosley presents Paris Minton and Fearless Jones the first a mild-mannered yet ambitious used-book dealer, the second a homicidally dangerous yet resolutely loyal companion (and also a World War II vet). This pair investigates the burning of Minton's bookstore as well as a series of murders in 1950s Los Angeles. Mixed up in a rather convoluted plot are Jewish Holocaust survivors, Israeli secret agents, a beautiful femme fatale, some eccentric evangelicals, and other assorted characters from black L.A. Mosley is still able to convey some of the difficulties of surviving in a racist, pre-Civil Rights society, but the quirky charm and devastating mood of postwar South Central L.A. are less pronounced in this novel than in his Easy Rawlins books. Still, given Mosley's popularity, this is recommended for all libraries. Roger A. Berger, Everett Community Coll., WA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly Review: HAbandoning the voice of his premier creation, Easy Rawlins, Mosley mines a new shaft of 1950s Los Angeles with a hero who combines the principles of Easy with the deadliness of Ray "Mouse" Alexander. The result is a violent, heroic and classic piece of noir fiction. Narrator Paris Minton is an appealing figure an easygoing black man for whom the written word is salvation and whose nameless used bookstore in Watts is paradise. Then the beautiful Elana Love enters his store and brings with her more trouble than Paris has ever seen enough trouble that Paris knows his only hope is his friend Fearless Jones. A former soldier, Jones is a riveting new creation. He's a man of both principle and action with an innate sense of justice and as his name makes clear, he's afraid of nothing. The novel rips along with a hunt for the girl and a race among competing factions to find a missing bond that's the key to a fortune. For the black characters it's a desperate struggle to stay alive in a white world where the deck is stacked. One sly reference tells the reader we're still in the same world and time inhabited by Easy Rawlins, and that Fearless and Mouse are equally "bad." But Fearless is also a knight-errant and hopefully destined for further adventures as fine as this one. (June 5) Forecast: With a 20-city author tour and major advertising, Mosley's first thriller since 1996's A Little Yellow Dog is sure to generate lots of interest and sales. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal Review: After forays into sf (Blue Light, LJ 10/1/98) and short fiction (Walkin' the Dog, LJ 8/99), Mosley returns to mystery—a move that is fairly certain to please fans, although with each new detective novel he seems more and more set in his own formula. Here, instead of Easy Rawlins, the upwardly aspiring World War II veteran and informal private detective, and his sociopathic friend Mouse Alexander, Mosley presents Paris Minton and Fearless Jones—the first a mild-mannered yet ambitious used-book dealer, the second a homicidally dangerous yet resolutely loyal companion (and also a World War II vet). This pair investigates the burning of Minton's bookstore as well as a series of murders in 1950s Los Angeles. Mixed up in a rather convoluted plot are Jewish Holocaust survivors, Israeli secret agents, a beautiful femme fatale, some eccentric evangelicals, and other assorted characters from black L.A. Mosley is still able to convey some of the difficulties of surviving in a racist, pre–Civil Rights society, but the quirky charm and devastating mood of postwar South Central L.A. are less pronounced in this novel than in his Easy Rawlins books. Still, given Mosley's popularity, this is recommended for all libraries.—Roger A. Berger, Everett Community Coll., WA (Reviewed June 1, 2001) (Library Journal, vol 126, issue 10, p224)

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ Even before sultry Elana Love walks into mild-mannered Paris Minton's life three months after his Watts bookstore opens, Mosley can't resist his signature scene: A pair of cops stroll into the shop determined to push Paris around just because he's a black man and it's 1954. But the trouble they spell is slow-burning compared to Elana's entrance a month later, when her search for Rev. William Grove, late head of the neighboring Messenger of the Divine flock, is interrupted by Leon Douglas, the violent ex-con determined to get his hands on the 10,000-franc bond his ex-cellmate, embezzler Sol Tannenbaum, left in Elana's custody to pay for his protection in the big house. In a whirlwind opening movement that ranks as Mosley's most accomplished, Leon chases Elana and Paris en route to Sol's; Elana beds Paris and leaves him high and dry in Venice Beach; Paris returns to find his bookstore burned to the ground; and Sol becomes the first of a dozen casualties. Fight fire with fire, thinks Paris, and promptly bails out his own secret weapon, Fearless Jones, who goes up against assorted thieves, killers, crooked cops, and Nazi swindlers with a ferocity that soon communicates itself to his inoffensive friend.
If they don't find Paris and Fearless quite a match for Easy Rawlins and his volatile friend Mouse Alexander (A Little Yellow Dog, 1996, etc.), fans starved for the mean streets of Watts during Mosley's sabbatical from mystery writing will rejoice in a prose style richer and more artfully stripped down than ever in the genre's first must-read of the year. (Author tour)
(Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2001)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

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1. Annotated Book List - Popular African-American Fiction

2. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

Author Web Sites:
1. Walter Mosley : Features biographical and bibliographical information on Mosley.
2. About Walter Mosley : A biography of the author and information on his books.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0316592382
0446610127 : Paperback - Mass Market
1586210637 : Cassette - Audio
1587240505 : Hardcover - Large Print
0792724984 : Cassette - Audio

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• School Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 064836

Fortunate son
Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

Sharing a close bond in spite of very different backgrounds, Eric, a handsome white man of privilege, and Tommy, an impoverished black youth with poor health, are separated by tragedy and reunited by a common enemy years later.

New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2006, 320 p.

Booklist Review: /*Starred Review*/ At a Los Angeles hospital, African American single mother Brianna Beerman sits vigil at the side of her fragile infant son, Thomas, born with a hole in his heart. White heart surgeon Minas Nolan sees her and is instantly attracted to the dark-skinned beauty with the radiant smile. A recent widower, Dr. Nolan has a healthy son, Eric, a week younger than Thomas. The four are soon living together. Brianna is the mother Eric desperately needs; Minas is a far better role model than Thomas biological father, Elton, who abandoned Brianna soon after learning she was pregnant. Though the boys love each other as brothers, they couldnt be more different. Sensitive Thomas finds joy in simple things, a blossoming flower, a bird in flight. Eric, blessed with good looks and good luck, takes his charmed life for granted. The makeshift family is wrenched apart when Brianna dies, and Thomas is forced to move in with unpredictable Elton. The boys live out their separate lives (Eric fathers a child at age 16; Thomas survives a stint in jail and several years on the streets), until dramatic circumstances reunite them more than a decade later. Mosley, best known for his acclaimed Easy Rawlins mystery series, weaves the themes of race, destiny, and redemption into an astonishing tale of unlikely siblings and unconditional love. -- Allison Block (Reviewed 04-15-2006) (Booklist, vol 102, number 16, p6)

Publishers Weekly Review: /* Starred Review */ White Los Angeles heart surgeon Minas Nolan, a very recent widower, meets African-American flower-shop employee Branwyn Beerman when her son Thomas is born prematurely with a hole in his lung, and without a father in his life. Minas has a son, Eric, a week younger than Tommy, and the four, along with enigmatic Vietnamese nanny Ahn, soon form a loving ménage. Following Branwyn's sudden death 50 pages later, Tommy, now six, is plunged into a hardscrabble life when his difficult father, Elton, claims him; he grows up without resentment, talking aloud to Branwyn when he's sad or confused (and sometimes to Elton's on-again, off-again partner, May), but ends up on the streets. Eric, meanwhile, sails through childhood and adolescence, but remains alienated, constantly missing "his brother," even having a child at 16 with Christine, who's a few years older. Knowingly drawing on the genre constraints that drive his Easy Rawlins mysteries, Mosley puts Thomas through trial after trial, and Eric through a kind of chronic heartlessness. Both continually refer to the time they lived together, and each thinks of the other as a real brother. After more than 10 years of separation, they're reunited, but that's not the point: with the lightest, slyest of touches, Mosley shows how a certain kind of inarticulate, carnal, involuntary affection transcends just about anything. It's not love, it's fate, and it's breathtaking. (Apr. 10) --Staff (Reviewed February 13, 2006) (Publishers Weekly, vol 253, issue 7, p62)

Library Journal Review: Tommy was born out of wedlock with a hole in his heart; he???s also lame and black. Eric, on the other hand, glows with health; he is so beautiful that people want to touch him???and he???s white. For a few years, the boys live together after Tommy???s mother and Eric???s widowed doctor father fall in love after meeting in the hospital ward. Then Tommy???s mother dies, and Tommy is wrested from the only family he???s known. Eric grows up leading a life that appears blessed, but with Tommy gone, he???s lost all that is important to him. Tommy, meanwhile, ends up on the street but feels lucky simply to be alive. In their twenties, the two still dream of each other when they are reunited by accident, and the bond between them is renewed. When their newfound happiness is imperiled, Tommy acts to save his brother. This is the story of two men joined by something deeper than the accident of birth or the color of their skin. As with all of Mosley???s (Cinnamon Kiss) novels, the writing is crisp and the plotting impeccable. Fortunate Son deserves to be on the shelves of every library. Enthusiastically recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/05.]???David Keymer, Modesto, CA (Reviewed March 1, 2006) (Library Journal, vol 131, issue 4, p79)

Kirkus Reviews Mosley's latest departure from his Easy Rawlins mysteries (Cinnamon Kiss, 2005, etc.) is a parable about the ineffable bond between two boys—one white, one black—raised as brothers.

A week after Thomas Beerman is born with a hole in his lung and a bleak prognosis for a short life inside a germ-free bubble, heart surgeon Minas Nolan's wife dies in the same West L.A. hospital giving birth to her big, vigorous son Eric, who seems to have sucked all the life out of her. Dr. Nolan and Brianna Beerman soon become friends, then lovers, and when she signs her sickly boy out of the hospital on his advice, he opens his lonely home to her and Tommy. All goes well until Brianna dies when the boys are six and Elton Trueblood, the father who's never done a thing for Tommy, turns up to claim him. The boys' enforced separation is a disaster for them both. Tommy, beaten by his eternally angry father and unable to continue at the school he's been sent to, takes to life on the streets, first hiding out in a private alley he makes his home, then making deliveries for a local drug-dealer. Eric, the golden boy who never has to make any decisions because everyone is drawn to him and everything is handed to him, realizes that his life is empty without Brianna and Tommy, the only people he's ever been able to open his heart to. The brothers' lives diverge in predictable ways (Tommy's physical injuries, prison term and long tenure as a homeless person versus Eric's unstoppable success as student and stud) with constant allegorical overtones en route to an anticlimax.

Though he doesn't duplicate the austere power of The Man in My Basement (2004), Mosley makes his simple tale gripping through the studied artlessness of his storytelling.
(Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2006)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

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1. Awards (Best Fiction) - Young Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> Booklist Editors' Choice -> Adult Fiction for Young Adults -> 2006

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0316114715
1594832196 : CD - Audio
1585477788 : Library binding - Large Print
0316066281 : Paperback

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20060220
• TID: 141729

Futureland: nine stories of an imminent world
Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

Offers nine stories of speculative fiction, creating worlds inhabited by leaders, commoners, technocrats, criminals, and revolutionaries, covering issues including social stratification, technological advances, and civil rights.

New York: Warner, c2001, 356 p.

Booklist Review: Mystery star Mosley tries his hand at science fiction again, to better effect than in the novel Blue Light (1998). For these nine interconnected stories, he conjures a mid-twenty-first-century world in which one company is the most powerful force in the world and political correctness is the law. The only significant revolutionaries are black, and blacks and whites are still highly antagonistic. All Mosley’s good guys are black, including the smartest man in the world, imprisoned for assisting the deaths of his ailing grandmother and uncle; the world’s heavyweight boxing champ--a six-foot-nine-inch woman who goes into politics after KO’ing the male heavyweight champ in less than a minute of round one; a private dick who solves cases with the help of a greatly enhanced artificial eye; and a regular-joe worker who becomes the reader’s eyewitness to the dawn of a new world when a backfiring biological weapon kills everyone who isn’t at least 12.5 percent black. Lest that last bit of business seem too black-triumphalist, the worker-hero quickly discovers that intraspecies predation hasn’t vanished. Ably slinging the technobabble to explain the odd wonder-gadget in his tales, and greasing them with plenty of “oh-baby” sex, Mosley creates sf in which Shaft and Superfly would feel at home. Can ya dig it?
(Reviewed September 1, 2001) -- Ray Olson

Publishers Weekly Review: After the qualified success of his first science fiction novel, Blue Light (1998), Mosley (best known for such mystery fiction as the Easy Rawlins series) returns with nine linked short stories set in a grim, cyberpunkish near-future. Unfortunately, heavy-handed plotting and unconvincing extrapolation weaken the collection's earnest social message. "Whispers in the Dark" introduces prodigy Ptolemy Bent, who will grow to be the smartest man in the world in spite of his poverty-ridden childhood. Ptolemy reappears in "Doctor Kismet" as an adviser to assassins trying to kill the richest, most corrupt man in the world and as the brains behind a series of global plots to overthrow the status quo in "En Masse" and "The Nig in Me." Champion boxer and much-hyped female role model Fera Jones steps away from the ring to take hands-on responsibility for the influence she wields in "The Greatest." With its easily befuddled talking computer justice system, "Little Brother" is more Star Trek than high-tech cyberpunk. In more familiar territory for Mosley, PI Folio Johnson investigates a series of murders linked to Doctor Kismet in "The Electric Eye." Although packaged as SF, this book is likely to disappoint readers of that genre who've already seen Mosley's themes of racial and economic rebellion more convincingly handled by authors like Octavia Butler. Mystery fans, on the other hand, are far more likely to embrace this latest example of Mosley's SF vision, with its comfortably familiar noirish tone and characters, than they did Blue Light. (Nov. 12)
— Staff (Reviewed September 10, 2001) (Publishers Weekly, vol 248, issue 37, p65)

Library Journal Review: Mosley's first foray into writing science fiction since Blue Light (LJ 10/1/98), these interrelated stories, set in the near future, read as a natural but chilling extension of our present. From child genius Ptolemy Bent, sentenced to prison for euthanizing his grandmother and uncle, to female boxer Fera, who becomes a feminist icon for the 21st century, his characters battle for both personal survival and a chance to turn back the clock. In this futuristic world, privacy is little but a memory and prejudice and suspicion still sour race relations. Mosley's reputation as the best-selling author of the Easy Rawlins mysteries may entice a number of his regular readers to pick up this book, where they will find some of the same bleak outlook, flashes of insight, and true-to-life African American characters. An additional audience will come from iPublish.com, where the first two stories were previously published as e-books. Recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ7/01.]—Rachel Singer Gordon, Franklin Park P.L., IL (Reviewed October 1, 2001) (Library Journal, vol 126, issue 16, p145)

Kirkus Reviews Nine linked stories that continue Mosley's foray into science fiction that began in Blue Light (1998). Mystery fans eager for another outing with Easy Rawlins or Socrates Fortlow can find a version of Mosley's brand of socially stigmatized, African-American crime-solver in New York private detective Folio Johnson, a former bodyguard who nearly died saving his employer, the megalomaniacal MacroSoft Corp. head Dr. Ivan Kismet (owner of the world's richest, biggest corporation and head of a new religion that posits that God can be reached directly through technology), and was thus blessed by Dr. Kismet with a mechanical eye that can scan DNA and a chunk of computerized circuitry in his brain that links him with the Internet and every communications system in the dark, gritty, overwired, debauched mid-21st century. "Electric Eye," the central story here, comes close to being a cyberpunk parody of the hard-boiled genre, in which its tired clichÉs–winning a fallen woman's love, waking up next to a freshly murdered corpse, etc.–are given a futuristic gloss. As cyberpunk godfather William Gibson did in Count Zero and Burning Chrome, Mosley uses stylish characters and technobabble to navigate an intricate, grimy, technologically baroque urban landscape where the struggles of exploited, marginalized, unusually gifted individuals, most of whom are racial, technological, or genetic hybrids like Folio, make significant—if occasionally unintended—changes in the repressive, vindictive, cruelly depersonalized world around them.
A vivid, exciting and, on the whole, well-executed take on cyberpunk that measures up to the work done 15 years ago by the Gibson and Bruce Sterling—but will Mosley's mystery fans go for them?
(Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2001)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

Other titles associated with this book:
Future land
Nine stories of an imminent world

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0446529540
0446610739 : Paperback - Mass Market
1587889870 : Cassette - Audio
1587889854 : Cassette - Audio
1587889862 : Cassette - Audio
1587889889 : Cassette - Audio
1593350864 : Audio
1593354479 : Audio

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 008655

Gone fishin'

Author: Mosley, Walter

Easy Rawlins is 19 when he goes on a trip with Mouse to Pariah, Texas, to get money from Mouse's stepfather, and there they encounter troubles that include dead bodies and a killer.

Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1997, 244 p.

Booklist Review: Mosley has elected to publish this prequel to his acclaimed Easy Rawlins mystery series with a small press specializing in the work of African American authors. Committed to the idea that well-known black writers have a unique opportunity to help smaller black presses establish themselves in the general trade market, he hopes that this venture will serve as a model for further such collaborations. Fortunately, the book itself is worthy of the project. Written before the other Rawlins novels but never published, it takes Easy and his lethal friend Mouse back to Texas before World War II and their subsequent move to Los Angeles. The 19-year-old Easy is a recognizable but very different character from the survivor we've come to know in the later books: illiterate, grieving his absent father, scraping by on the moment-to-moment pleasures of drink and sex, the young Easy knows little of the larger world. His journey to awareness begins with a soul-changing road trip to the bayous of Pariah, Texas, where Mouse hopes to settle a score with his hated stepfather. What takes place is part thriller and part coming-of-age novel, and it works fine on both levels. More important, though, it contains the beginnings of what would become Mosley's special gift: the ability to vivify African American life by placing fully individualized characters in a specific historical moment. The young Easy, beginning to summon the courage he needs to escape the poverty and violence of his prewar, rural South environment, stands on his own without the help of the later books, but for those who know the series, this short novel opens a treasured window into the past of a very good friend. ((Reviewed December 1, 1996)) -- Bill Ott

Publishers Weekly Review: Mosley's sixth Easy Rawlins novel is the chronological first--and less mystery or crime fiction than a powerfully raw, lyrical coming-of-age story. Here is 19-year-old Easy in 1939 before his war experiences and before his departure from Houston for L.A. Here, too, is Raymond Alexander, better known as Mouse, the most colorful and unpredictable series character. It's Mouse ("nuthin' but bad news wit' a grin") who uses a familiar blend of threats and bribes to pry Easy away from his uncertain job in Houston and onto the road in a borrowed '36 Ford. Their destination is desolate Pariah, Texas--Mouse's home once, and still home to his hated stepfather, Reese Corn. Along the way, they pick up a young couple running from trouble--not knowing that Mouse is worse trouble than any they've seen. Easy, drawn along in Mouse's wake, spends much of this novel in such a feverish state that his memories of his father are as real as the extraordinary people of Pariah--Momma Jo, the big, strong woman who lives alone in the swamp; her hunchbacked son, Domaque, whose literacy shames Easy; Miss Dixon, the white woman who owns Pariah. Encountering (sometimes precipitating) violent and unexpected threats, Easy and Mouse forge bonds that will link them in the decades that follow, though they choose very different paths. This late encounter with the early Easy offers an extra dimension to readers who have met, in previous stories, the man he grew to be. 150,000 first printing; author tour. (Jan.) FYI: Mosley, also published by Norton, chose Black Classic Press to bring out this novel to bolster the independent African American-owned press. Publisher W. Paul Coates will tour with Mosley to support this partnership.

Library Journal Review: There can be no better way to start off the year than with Easy Rawlins. Fans already needing a fix after Mosley's recent A Little Yellow Dog (LJ 6/1/96), get happy: Easy and Mouse are back in this "prequel" to the series. This latest novel, actually Mosley's original Easy/Mouse story, written in the late 1980s but never released, follows the classic search-for-father motif--literally for Mouse and figuratively for the 19-year-old Easy, who finds himself a very un-Easy rider on a road trip to Pariah, Texas, to strong-arm Mouse's stepdaddy Reese for money. Easy quickly lands up to here in trouble that includes witchcraft, fevered sex, a fleeing killer, and a few dead bodies. While Mouse is facing down his wicked stepfather, Easy must exorcise the demons of his own past in order to achieve a coming of age that's steeped in blood, guilt, and forgiveness. Not a straight mystery like earlier volumes in the series, Gone Fishin' is a more spiritual novel that reaches into the characters' pasts to reveal their souls. Mosley delivers the goods every time, and Easy fans are going to eat this up. Highly recommended. [For an interview with Walter Mosley, see "Small Presses in the Black," p. 144.]--Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"

Kirkus Reviews Fans of Easy Rawlins who worry that he's been growing old too fast--Mosley's five novels from Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) to A Little Yellow Dog (p. 565) have carried him from 1948 to 1963--will be happy to have this prequel set in 1939, a slender coming-of-age story that takes Easy and his violent friend Raymond (Mouse) Alexander from their boyhood home in Houston's Fifth Ward to the aptly named town of Pariah, where Mouse plans to squeeze money out of his stepfather, Reese Corn, to underwrite his marriage to his sweetheart EttaMae. Easy, scared that Mouse will find out about the company he's been keeping with EttaMae, agrees to drive the car Mouse has swindled for the trip, and the two of them set off into a landscape dotted with hapless hitchhikers and seductive voodoo queens, hard men, willing women, and hellfire preachers--most with unforgettable stories to tell. By the time Easy heads back for Houston, Mouse will have gotten his money, Easy will have lost whatever innocence he had in "my real war" before the white man's war of 1941, and Mosley's vast audience will have learned that "life was so hard that we were too tired from just living to lend a hand." No mystery, but a densely imagined prologue that goes a long way toward explaining why Easy spends so much of his adult life hamstrung by his deepest loyalties, as if every friendship were a life sentence.
(Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1996)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

Other related features:

1. Annotated Book List - Popular African-American Fiction

Author Web Sites:
1. Walter Mosley : Features biographical and bibliographical information on Mosley.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
1574780255

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• American Historical Fiction: An Annotated Guide to Novels for Adults and Young Adults, published by Oryx Press
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046385

Killing Johnny Fry: a sexistentialist novel
Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

When Cordell Carmel catches his longtime girlfriend with another man, the experience dissolves his calm, everyday existence into a thirst for revenge and a sexual odyssey in search of a new way of life.

New York: Bloomsbury Pub., 2007, 288 p.

Booklist Review: Though hes best at crime novels, Mosley has been busy reinventing himself as an all-around writer of high purpose, trying his hand, with mixed results, at literary fiction, political essay, and science fiction. Despite its noiresque title, this one represents a surprising new direction: what Mosley calls the sexistential novel. Mild-mannered Cordell Carmel drops by his longtime girlfriends apartment unannounced and finds her having the orgasm of her life with another man. Carmel sneaks out unseen, disturbed and aroused. Obsessed with a movie that seems to mirror his situation, he transforms from passive nice guy to sexual aggressor--and soon finds himself having the sex of his life, with a series of beautiful, adoring women. Adrift and confused, he keeps going, hoping to find himself by losing control. It's hard to know how much of Mosley's audience will want to follow him on this explicitly sexual journey. The sex scenes are compelling, but the story loses its way; it might be too much sex for some readers and too little novel for others. In a way, it contains the same contradictions as a big-budget porno movie that uses a self-important story line to lend the project an air of legitimacy, then drives home the message that our baser sexual instincts are nothing to be ashamed of. Mosley deserves kudos for his courage, but let's hope sexistentialism is a one-night stand. -- Keir Graff (Reviewed 11-15-2006) (Booklist, vol 103, number 6, p7)

Publishers Weekly Review: Mosley returns from the vastly underrated Fortunate Son and from Fear of the Dark with a piece of what one might call "deep erotica": there's plenty of sex, and also plenty of motivation for it within protagonist Cordel Carmel's travails and ruminations, as far-fetched as they can get. After a charged-but-chaste lunch with young Lucy Carmichael (a blonde in her early 20s looking to be introduced to Cordel's art agent friend), Cordel, 45, walks in on Joelle (his longtime, non-live-in girlfriend): Joelle's being very consensually sodomized by a white man wearing a red condom, their (very well-endowed) mutual acquaintance, Johnny Fry. Cordel walks out quietly, without being seen. In short order, Cordel buys a porno video and gets enraptured with its sadist star, Sisypha; quits his freelance-translation gig; has conflicted, amazing sex with Joelle (who continues to lie to him); has unconflicted, amazing sex with Lucy (who seems very nice) and with voluptuous neighbor Sasha Bennett (who seems way crazy); meets Sisypha for an Eyes Wide Shut???like experience; seduces the young, ghetto Monica Wells; and finally, within the week, has his confrontation with Johnny Fry. Though it all, Cordel's thoughts on humiliation, submission, pain, family, aging and abuse manage to sustain the wisp-thin plot of this total male fantasy. (Jan.) --Staff (Reviewed October 30, 2006) (Publishers Weekly, vol 253, issue 43, p37)

Library Journal Review: Like his last two adult novels (The Wave and Fortunate Son), Mosley's latest is a departure from his best-selling Easy Rawlins mysteries. His protagonist, 45-year-old translator Cordell Carmel, considers himself lucky that girlfriend Joelle is so undemanding that they spend only one night a week together. Stopping by Joelle's apartment unannounced one day, he discovers her with another man, aspiring musician Johnny Fry. That night, Cordell buys his first X-rated DVD and begins a journey of sexual self-discovery. Watching The Myth of Sisypha, the vividly described adult film he has purchased, opens Cordell's eyes to a world of sex and power, pleasure and pain. He explores his renewed sexual energy with a young photographer he's helping, an attractive neighbor, a French student he meets on the subway, and Sisypha herself. Mosley's decision to subtitle the book "a sexistenial novel" implies a more philosophical approach to sexuality than the gratuitous sexual episodes described here. Recommended only for libraries with strong demand for all of Mosley's work.???Karen Kleckner, Deerfield P.L., IL --Karen Kleckner (Reviewed November 1, 2006) (Library Journal, vol 131, issue 18, p69)

Kirkus Reviews And now for something completely different from Easy Rawlins' prolific creator (Cinnamon Kiss, 2005, etc.), who's branching out into still another genre.

Cordell Carmel, a middle-aged New York translator everybody calls "L," decides one afternoon on his way to a conference to wait a few hours for a first-class train to Philadelphia. Heading over to girlfriend Joelle Petty's apartment, he finds her sharing a frantic embrace with Johnny Fry, a white man who'd like to switch from being a personal trainer to playing classical guitar. Instead of calling attention to himself, L leaves quietly (though he does turn back briefly when he thinks Jo is crying out in pain) and proceeds to pull down the edifice of his carefully constructed life. He smashes his hand against a brick wall, orders a high-fat meal, buys an expensive bottle of cognac and takes home a porn video, The Myth of Sisypha, that puts him in touch with his appetite for passion and pain. The next day, after missing the conference and infuriating his agent, L begins to grab every chance at a new life. He reinvents himself as an agent for photographer Lucy Carmichael, flirts with female acquaintances and takes three of them to bed, then returns to Jo bent on getting some of the kind of wild, crazy sex she's been enjoying with Johnny. But it's The Myth of Sisypha that has the most profound impact on L, and when he has a chance to meet the video's star and embark on a series of scenarios that cross the line from NC-17 to XXX, his obsessions with getting off and killing Johnny are joined by another kind of desire as tender as it is unlikely.

An interesting look at a male in midlife crisis. As L says, "I had come alive. And life hurt."
(Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2006)

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Little Scarlet
Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

When a man who fled the 1965 Watts riots is suspected of killing a woman in a nearby apartment building, Easy Rawlins begins a murder investigation and learns that the case has sobering racial origins.

Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2004, 320 p.

Booklist Review: /*Starred Review*/ Mosley returns to top form in this ninth installment of his celebrated Easy Rawlins series. In the early volumes, the calendar moved ahead almost one decade per book, but Mosley has been lingering through the 1960s--rightfully so, given the far-reaching impact of that turbulent era on African American life. Here it’s the last days of the Watts riots in 1966, and a black woman, nicknamed Little Scarlet, has been found murdered in her apartment, the same building that an unidentified white man appeared to enter after escaping a mob of rioters. Did the white man commit the murder? The LAPD wants answers quickly, which is why Rawlins is asked to investigate. As has been the case throughout this series, the mystery at hand serves as a window opening on a historical moment. As Easy investigates, he finds himself forced to make sense of his own contrary feelings about the riots--his sadness at the loss of life and property in his community set against his recognition of inevitability, of the fact that the riots were expressing out in the open the anger every black man and woman had been forced to hide: “Now it’s said and nothing will ever be the same. That’s good for us, no matter what we lost. And it could be good for white people, too.” Mosley remains a master at showing his readers slices of history from the inside, from a perspective that is all those things history usually isn’t: intimate, individual, and passionate.
-- Bill Ott (BookList, 05-01-2004, p1516)

Publishers Weekly Review: /* Starred Review */ Set during the Watts riots of 1965, this eighth entry in Mosley's acclaimed Easy Rawlins series (Bad Boy Brawly Brown, etc.) demonstrates the reach and power of the genre, combining a deeply involving mystery with vigorous characterizations and probing commentary about race relations in America. Easy Rawlins, 45, is—like the rest of black L.A.—angry: "the angry voice in my heart that urged me to go out and fight after all the hangings I had seen, after all of the times I had been called nigger and all of the doors that had been slammed in my face." But Easy stays out of the fiery streets until a white cop and his bosses recruit him to identify the murderer of a young black woman, Nola Payne; the cops suspect an unidentified white man whom Nola sheltered during the riots, and are worried that if they pursue the case, word will leak and the riots will escalate. Easy, an unlicensed PI who also works as a school custodian, agrees to investigate, drawing into his quest several series regulars, including the stone killer Mouse, the magical healer Mama Jo and his own family. There's also a sexy young woman whose allure, like that of the violent streets, threatens to smash the life of integrity he has so carefully built. In time, Easy focuses on a homeless black man as the killer, not only of Nola but of perhaps 20 other black women, all of whom had hooked up with white men. This is Mosley's best novel to date: the plot is streamlined and the language simple yet strong, allowing the serpentine story line to support Easy's amazingly complex character and hypnotic narration as Mosley plunges us into his world and, by extension, the world of all blacks in white-run America. Fierce, provocative, expertly entertaining, this is genre writing at its finest. (July 5)
— Staff (Reviewed May 24, 2004) (Publishers Weekly, vol 251, issue 21, p47)

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ Easy Rawlins sizzles as Watts burns.

The official death toll in the 1966 Watts riots is 33, but the LAPD is keeping a 34th fatality quiet. The victim is red-haired Nola Payne, a.k.a. Li'l Scarlet, strangled and then shot after she rescued a white man who'd been rousted from his car by an opportunistic thief. Det. Melvin Suggs and Deputy Commissioner Gerald Jordan don't say it in so many words, but the cops who drive the streets hassling loners are scared to go door-to-door asking questions while storefronts are still smoldering. So Easy accepts a paper from Jordan authorizing him to investigate. As usual, Easy isn't much of a detective—his inquiries lead to a chain of suspicious characters who finger one another—but he could hardly be improved as a philosopher and aphorist. Recognizing early on that the official response to the riots, enlisting subservient black men into the oppressive ranks of white officialdom and cracking down on the rest, marks "the beginning of the breakup of our community," Easy, who's "never willingly said anything intelligent" to a white man, follows a trail of ill-fated souls who've sought to cross racial divides till he finds the most tortured killer of his checkered career (Six Easy Pieces, 2003, etc.).

The real strength of Easy's narrative, though, is his unflinching recognition that in working with the police, he's crossing the same border that's driven his brothers and sisters to violence.
(Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2004)

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0316073032
0446612715 : Paperback - Mass Market
1586216600 : CD - Audio
1586216597 : Cassette - Audio
0786266120 : Hardcover - Large Print

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• TID: 124640

Little yellow dog, A: an Easy Rawlins mystery

Author: Mosley, Walter

Easy Rawlins is working in a high school as head custodian after he has stopped drinking when he discovers a corpse on the grounds and becomes involved in the investigation during the 1960s.

Booklist Review: /*Starred Review*/ Most successful mystery series find a good groove and stay put, holding their audience with the pleasures of familiarity. Only the best crime writers, like James Lee Burke (see opposite page), manage to rework their grooves, staying put but never letting comfort supersede substance. Then there's Walter Mosley, whose Easy Rawlins mysteries break most of the rules. By allowing Easy to grow older in real time (in five books, the series has moved from the mid-1940s through 1963), Mosley forces himself to reinvent his hero in every book, asking readers to accept change in a series character much as we would in ourselves, gradually but inevitably. In this installment, Easy has moved away from the street life that has alternately attracted and repelled him in the past; he's working as a building engineer at a Los Angeles junior high school, raising his two adopted children, and struggling to avoid the storm clouds of discontent that continue to gather both in the nation and in his South Central L.A. home as the 1960s grind on. Then an impulsive decision to help a beautiful schoolteacher hide her yapping dog from an angry husband threatens to jeopardize Easy's hard-won island of security. Soon he becomes a top suspect in two murders and must return to the street if he is to extricate himself from the mess. Mosley lets his plot unravel with the skill of a genre veteran, but as always, it is his ability to set Easy's personal story in the context of the historical moment that gives this series its uniqueness. November 1963 isn't just ambience here; it's counterpoint to the drama of an individual black man realizing that his world will never be the same again. A superb novel in a superb series. ((Reviewed May 1, 1996)) -- Bill Ott

School Library Journal Review: YA--Easy Rawlins makes another appearance in this fast-moving mystery set in the African American community of Los Angeles in the 1960s. Although the story is filled with murder, drugs, and intrigue, it is an upbeat one that will appeal to urban YAs. Easy Rawlins is a likable fellow who works as a supervisory janitor in Sojourner Truth Junior High School and struggles to provide a loving and supportive home to two youngsters he rescued from the streets. Roman Gasteau is found murdered on the school grounds; his twin brother is discovered dead; and his wife, Idabell Turner, a teacher, is also slain. Idabell's little yellow dog somehow seems to be at the core of this string of murders. Easy has served his time on the streets of L.A., creating an underground world of friends and contacts in the process. The mutual respect and love between him and the many unique characters, coupled with Easy's smooth integration into the African American underworld, help him quickly solve the three related murders. The pace is fast; the characters many; the setting and language rich and authentic; the ending satisfying. Mosely has created another winner.--Dottie Kraft, formerly at Farifax County Public Schools, VA

Publishers Weekly Review: Easy Rawlins is back (after his last appearance in Black Betty), which is great news for readers intrigued by Mosley's noir L.A. settings and his resourceful, street-smart hero. It's the early 1960s, and Easy has settled for a quiet, respectable life, out of touch with his raffish old comrades, making a home for his two adopted kids, working as a maintenance supervisor at a public school in Watts. But dead bodies interfere with his solid existence: first, a well-dressed corpse shows up in the school gardens; next, the first corpse's twin is discovered at the home of an attractive teacher at the school who has disappeared--leaving Easy, who has enjoyed a quick tumble with her, to look after her little dog, Pharaoh. When white police (even an ambitious Latino sergeant) come sniffing around, Easy draws their close attention; in that time and place, independent black men were automatic suspects in any mayhem. It is Mosley's great gift to make the racist atmosphere palpable without rubbing it in, and to show the depths of courage and tenacity in his marginal characters without preachiness. In the violent events that build to a bloody climax on the day JFK is shot, Easy and his friends, despite all their failings, hold to a code that never falters, meeting the worst life can throw at them with humor and grit. Mosley's thrillers, always thrilling, are salutary as well. BOMC and QPB selections; author tour. (July)

Library Journal Review: Mosley's fifth outing with Easy Rawlins is no less enjoyable than its predecessors. Set in the early 1960s, this installment finds Easy working in a high school as head custodian for the Board of Education two years after giving up drinking and the "street life." When a corpse turns up on school grounds, Easy finds himself reluctantly caught up in the investigation--between the rock and the hard place of the cops and the killers. Mosley writes in the grand tradition of the American hard-boiled private investigator. His dialog is sharp and his characters vivid--the reader can almost feel the mean L.A. streets. Brimming with sex, deceit, and smoking guns, A Little Yellow Dog is a brawny, gritty, page-turning mystery that's a hell of a fun ride. [BOMC Selection; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/95.]--Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ Easy Rawlins has been working for two years as a supervising custodian in Sojourner Truth Junior High School when he finds alluring math teacher Idabell Turner in her classroom much too early one morning for anything but trouble. Armed only with a wild story about how her husband, Holland Gasteau, has threatened to kill her dog, she's got Easy (Black Betty, 1994, etc.) in her arms within minutes, and his carefully constructed life in a shambles. By the end of the day, the Watts police will discover the corpses of both Holland and his twin brother Roman, and they'll be measuring Easy, who's already been accused of stealing from the school, for the rap. Instead of coming clean to the cops about his involvement with Ida, Easy--who knows that the crooked ways he got his job and adopted his children, Jesus and Feather, won't stand up to official scrutiny--decides to go back to the streets he had hoped he'd left behind. Knowing that most of any investigation will be under the table to start with--"You had to kill somebody white to get any kind of news splash in the sixties," he reflects--Easy, backed up by his unusually subdued gangster buddy Mouse, ties the Gasteaus into an elaborate drug-smuggling scheme, and also, by the end, into every unsolved crime of 1963. The fantastically intricate plot is only average for this celebrated series. But no living novelist beats Mosley's nervy sense of what thin ice the solidest-seeming characters build their lives upon, and how terrifying it is to feel the surface crack and shiver.
(Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1996)

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Little dog
Yellow dog

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0393039242
0671884298 : Paperback - Mass Market
0743451805 : Paperback
0671019864 : Paperback
1559273747 : Cassette - Audio
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Man in my basement, The: a novel
Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

To save the home that has belonged to his family for generations, Charles Blakey, a young black man whose life is slowly crumbling around him, agrees to rent out his basement for the summer to a mysterious stranger.

Boston: Little, Brown, c2004, 256 p.

Booklist Review: Charles Blakey is an unemployed black man, deep in debt, who drinks too much, has few friends, is awkward with women, and lives alone in a large house where the basement is filled with artifacts of his family’s rich history. As in many of Mosley’s books, the story begins with a knock on the door: Anniston Bennet, a wealthy white man with mysterious motives, wants to rent Blakey’s sizable basement. But while there is mystery here, this is no hunt for a criminal as in Mosley’s famous Easy Rawlins series. Instead, an inventive premise lays the groundwork for a philosophical debate. Bennet wants Blakey to hold him prisoner for 65 days, his way of atoning for “crimes against humanity.” Blakey is extremely reluctant, but the “rent” is considerable and his options are dwindling, so he agrees. At first, he’s afraid of his voluntary prisoner, but the balance of power begins shifting unpredictably as the two men engage in heated question-and-answer sessions. In a way, Blakey finds his connection to his family and to the world as he explores relationships between the powerful and the disempowered, between world-changing evil and peaceful apathy. And when Bennet asks, “You think that you can have the easy life of TV and gasoline without someone suffering and dying somewhere?” the book’s timeliness is irrevocably established. This is fine, provocative writing from the prolific Mosley, whose gifts extend well beyond his excellent mysteries.
-- Keir Graff (BookList, 10-15-2003, p358)

Publishers Weekly Review: Even in his genre fiction, which includes mysteries (the Easy Rawlins, Fearless Jones and Socrates Fortlaw series) and SF (Blue Light, etc.), Mosley has not been content simply to spin an engrossing action story but has sought to explore larger themes as well. In this stand-alone literary tale, themes are in the forefront as Mosley abandons action in favor of a volatile, sometimes unspoken dialogue between Charles Blakey and Anniston Bennet. Blakey, descended from a line of free blacks reaching back into 17th-century America, lives alone in the big family house in Sag Harbor. Bennet is a mysterious white man who approaches Blakey with a strange proposition—to be locked up in Blakey's basement—that Blakey comes to accept only reluctantly and with reservations. The magnitude of Bennet's wealth, power and influence becomes apparent gradually, and his quest for punishment and, perhaps, redemption, proves unsettling—to the reader as well as to Blakey, who finds himself trying to understand Bennet as well as trying to recast his own relatively purposeless life. The shifting power relationship between Bennet and Blakey works nicely, and it is fitting that Blakey's thoughts find expression more in physicality than in contemplation; his involvements with earthy, sensual Bethany and racially proud, sophisticated and educated Narciss reflect differing possibilities. The novel, written in adorned prose that allows the ideas to breathe, will hold readers rapt; it is Mosley's most philosophical novel to date, as he explores guilt, punishment, responsibility and redemption as individual and as social constructs. While it will be difficult for this novel to achieve the kind of audience Mosley's genre fiction does, the author again demonstrates his superior ability to tackle virtually any prose form, and he is to be applauded for creating a rarity, an engaging novel of ideas. (Jan.)
— Staff (Reviewed December 15, 2003) (Publishers Weekly, vol 250, issue 50, p54)

Library Journal Review: /* Starred Review */ "No one can save anyone, not even themselves," insists Anniston Bennet, the antagonist of this most unusual novel. Bennet is serving a self-induced, 65-day prison sentence in a homemade cell in the basement of protagonist Charles Blakey, a stranger to whom he pays a hefty $48,750 to provide the space plus food and books. The white, 57-year-old Bennett and the black, 33-year-old Blakey seemingly couldn't be more different, but as their stories unfurl, the reader will see that the men are in some ways similar. Bennet's self-imprisonment is an act of penance to absolve himself of his horrendous deeds, including killing and abetting corporations in raping impoverished countries for their natural resources. Blakey is a liar and thief who, through inaction, has hastened the death of an elderly uncle. Both characters are trying to escape their pasts, Bennett by incarcerating himself and Blakey by literally selling off historic family heirlooms. Yet in the end the past cannot be restrained. Mosley fans expecting a mystery might be disappointed, but this thought-provoking novel will satisfy those with literary tastes. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/03.]—Michael Rogers, "Library Journal" (Reviewed December 15, 2003) (Library Journal, vol 128, issue 20, p168)

Kirkus Reviews In Mosley's boldly understated fable, an unemployed African-American agrees to rent space in his basement to a wealthy white businessman for two months.

Except for living in New York's Harbor district, Charles Blakey might be a double for the denizens of Mosley's Watts (Six Easy Pieces, 2003, etc.). He's got no wife, no current girlfriend, few friends—though those few are ancient and loyal—and no work since he was fired from his job as a bankteller for petty embezzling. Worse still, he's about to lose the house his family's lived in for seven generations because he can't make payments on the mortgage he's taken out to tide him over. But when Greenwich reclamation expert Anniston Bennet approaches him with a request to let his basement for the summer, Charles isn't even tempted—until his other feeble sources of income dry up and his back is to the wall. It turns out that Bennet is offering a fabulous sum, nearly $50,000, for his stay; that he's picked Charles out especially as his host after doing a great deal of research; and that in cleaning out the basement to make it ready for him, Charles, who according to antique dealer Narciss Gully has turned up family heirlooms worth just as much as Bennet promises, doesn't really need his money anymore. By this time, however, he's become entranced by the combination of mastery and submission the white man is offering him, and the two enter into a relationship that becomes steadily more lacerating for them both.

Fans of Mosley's nonfiction (Workin' on the Chain Gang, 1997, etc.) will know from the beginning what Bennet wants from Charles. Even given the resulting lack of suspense and a story that falls off sharply by the end, this slender parable is Mosley's most provocative and impassioned novel yet.
(Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2003)

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0316570826
031615931X : Paperback
158621585X : CD - Audio
1586215841 : Cassette - Audio
0786262427 : Hardcover - Large Print
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• TID: 120995

Red death, A

Author: Mosley, Walter

In the 1950s, the IRS, the FBI, and the local police pursue Easy Rawlins for different reasons.

Publishers Weekly Review: Mosley's second novel (after Devil in a Blue Dress ) confirms the advent of an extraordinary storyteller. It is five years after the events detailed in the first novel and Easy Rawlins has used the stolen money he kept back in 1948 to purchase a pair of L.A. apartment buildings. There he masquerades as the janitor, quietly enjoying the fruits of ownership and dabbling in private investigation. But he is suddenly in the grip of powerful government forces. When the IRS wants to know where Easy got the money to become a landlord, Easy's sole recourse is to agree to work undercover for the FBI on a witch-hunt to net Reds. The situation presents only the first of the moral dilemmas here: Easy's remorseless, deadly best friend, Mouse, has come to L.A. in pursuit of his ex-wife, EttaMae, who has fled with their young son. Etta, however, is the only woman Easy has ever loved, and she is more than willing to reciprocate--at least on the physical level. Solid and entertaining, the story nonetheless remains secondary to the portrait of a time and a place, to the indelible reality of Easy Rawlins, a black man in a world not yet ready to accept him. Mosley, with his unique talents, may well be in the process of creating a genre classic. BOMC, QPB and Mysterious Book Club selections. (July)

Library Journal Review: Mosley's unique narrative voice ( Devil in a Blue Dress , LJ 6/1/90) reappears in the appealing person of Easy Rawlins, an astute and tough war veteran living in early 1950s Los Angeles. In deep trouble with the IRS for nonpayment of taxes, Easy half-heartedly agrees to spy on a suspected Jewish Communist for an avid FBI agent in return for leverage with the tax man. As before, Mosley's inclusion of life in Watts, contemporary social attitudes, and colloquial speech contribute to the excellence and authenticity of plot and character portrayal. Easy to take.

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ Watts, 1953. Easy Rawlins, fresh from his Edgar-nominated debut (Devil in a Blue Dress), reluctantly agrees to spy on Communist union-organizer Chaim Wenzler for Red-baiting FBI agent Darryl Craxton in order to get IRS agent Reginald Lawrence--hot on his trail for back taxes on his off-the-books apartment buildings--off his back. But nobody (as Easy knows all too well) ever gets off a black man's back; and long before Poinsettia Jackson, one of Easy's hard-case tenants, is found hanging from a strap in the apartment she's stopped paying for and before Chaim Wenzler's work leads Easy to the African Migration movement, the First African Church, and Reverend Towne and Tania Lee are shot in fiagrante delicto--inevitably to be followed by Wenzler himself--Easy realizes that the two federal men are playing him off against each other. Who pulled the trigger on Wenzler and the others? As in Devil in a Blue Dress, Mosley's plot is so tangled it hardly matters. But the laconic poetry of Easy's voice floats through a central situation much more original and compelling than before. This time Mosley earns the acclaim his first novel received.
(Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1991)

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0671749897 : Paperback - Mass Market
0671010069 : Paperback - Mass Market
0393029980 : Hardcover
0743451767 : Paperback
0671019848 : Paperback
155927719X : CD - Audio
1559272341 : Cassette - Audio
1560547235 : Hardcover - Large Print

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• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046387

RL's dream

Author: Mosley, Walter

Recounting his memories to a young white woman who is also a refugee from a painful Southern past, Soupspoon Wise, a dying blues performer, describes a brief encounter with a famous performer that still haunts him

Booklist Review: /*Starred Review*/Walter Mosley's first novel outside the confines of the crime genre proves every bit as distinctive as his celebrated Easy Rawlins mysteries. A searingly eloquent requiem for a bluesman, the book tells the story of Soupspoon Wise, a 70-year-old blues guitar player and singer from the Mississippi Delta, who faces the horror of a lonely death in New York City. Evicted from his Lower East Side apartment, he is rescued from the street by Kiki, a young southern woman with problems of her own; these two very different characters--one young, white, angry, and on the run from an abusive family; the other old, black, world weary, and living on his memories of playing with legendary bluesman Robert "RL" Johnson--offer one another an opportunity to sort through their pasts and to reconnect with their emotional selves. Mosley's real subject here is pain, the agony of its all-too-specific reality and the oddly transforming way that sharing one's pain, whether through music or words or love, can keep the demons at bay, at least momentarily. It's not a new subject--pain is as old as life--but Mosley makes it new by pulling the threads that connect Soupspoon's pain to Kiki's, your pain to mine. That's what bluesmen do, of course, and it's what Robert Johnson did better than any of them: "Robert Johnson's blues would rip the skin right off yo' back. Robert Johnson's blues get down to a nerve most people don't even have no more." It's that nerve Mosley is searching for here, and when he finds it, you feel it. Yes, it hurts, but, like the blues, it hurts in that good kind of way. ((Reviewed June 1 & 15, 1995)) -- Bill Ott

Publishers Weekly Review: After four increasingly well-received crime novels starring Los Angeles PI Easy Rawlins, Mosley has moved strongly ahead to a more searching and deeply felt style and subject. He writes here of Atwater "Soupspoon" Wise, a battered, failing relic of a man who once played backup to legendary Delta jazz guitarist Robert "RL" Johnson and who is now barely surviving on New York's Lower East Side. When we meet him, Soupspoon, who has cancer, is being evicted from his tiny apartment. Enter Kiki Waters, a hard-drinking, profane redhead who fled a life of horror and incest in Arkansas and now ekes out an uneasy living at a Wall Street insurance firm. With her tough street smarts, she stops the eviction cold, uses her office know-how to fake lavish health insurance for Soupspoon and moves him in with her. They cling together, these two outcasts from hard times, Soupspoon with a gentleness born of deep resignation, Kiki with a protective desperation fueled by booze and rage. Gradually, Soupspoon's life begins to mend: someone he knew as a kid in the South offers him a gig at his after-hours drinking place; a pretty young girl is drawn to his sweetness. But for Kiki, the only way out is through violence and flight. Mosley has always been a vivid writer, but here his work achieves a constant level of dark poetry: he flawlessly integrates Soupspoon's and Kiki's past harsh lives and memories with the keenly observed contemporary New York slum scene as the bittersweet blues constantly sound somber chords beneath. There is no false sentimental note anywhere in the book, just a deeply moving creation of two extraordinary people who achieve a powerful humanity where it would seem almost impossible it should exist. Author tour. (Aug.)

Library Journal Review: Atwater "Soupspoon" Wise, an aging bluesman in New York City, is evicted from his apartment. Kiki Waters, a young white woman, takes him in, nursing him back to health and forging the necessary health insurance information to get him treated for cancer. The two form a strange friendship; both are from the South, and both have left behind pasts that demand to be dealt with. Soupspoon knew the legendary Robert "RL" Johnson in his youth and is haunted by the desire to learn the secret of Johnson's music; Kiki was abused by her father and ran away in her early teens. Mosley's swirl of characters, locales, and memories is intoxicating, and the plot moves forward relentlessly, taut as the mystery novels (e.g., Black Betty, LJ 5/1/94) for which he is renowned. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/95.]--David Dodd, Univ. of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Kirkus Reviews Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries (Black Betty, 1994, etc.) always seemed to be moving away from tightly plotted whodunits toward his trademark high-energy riffs, and here he makes his move to the mainstream with a hazy, tender tale of a dying bluesman taken in by a hard-bitten urban survivalist. Kiki Waters, released from the hospital after taking the wrong side in a mugging, finds her downstairs neighbor being evicted for nonpayment. Anointing herself Soupspoon Wise's goddaughter, she installs him in her place, invites him into her bed (an offer he can easily refuse), and sets about hustling him an insurance card. In these early scenes Kiki comes across with the likable aplomb of a cartoon heroine, but she's battling monsters like nothing Supergirl ever faced: Soupspoon is riddled with cancer and haunted by scenes from a life eternally on the move. "Storyteller need somebody wanna hear what he got to tell," he announces to Kiki and, armed with a tape recorder, spills his fragmentary memories of the women he's slept with, the men he's seen killed, and his formative stint with legendary mentor Robert (RL) Johnson. Then, once he's in a groove, Soupspoon takes his act on the Manhattan streets one last time, hunting down Alfred Metsgar, a bass player he once worked with, and Mavis Spivey, his forgotten ex-wife--neither of whom is overjoyed to see him--to get their memories on tape. Meanwhile, Kiki has begun to dredge up her own suppressed recollections of an abusive father back in Arkansas and the nursemaid who rescued her. Even Randy, a storekeeper with the hots for Kiki, turns out to have a story of his own. As Soupspoon's delirium deepens, he and Kiki inevitably drift apart--though the final separation arrives with a bang--until their stories, magically cross-pollinated, find the separate endings they've been heading toward all along. About what you'd expect if Flannery O'Connor had had the time to expand "Judgment Day" to novel length: as dark and rich as the Easy Rawlins stories, but without the persistent lure of Easy's search for the truth.
(Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1995)

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Other titles associated with this book:
Dream of RL
R L's dream

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0393038025
067188428X : Paperback
1559273453 : Cassette - Audio
0786205571 : Hardcover - Large Print
9999961843 : Cassette - Audio

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046388

Six Easy pieces: Easy Rawlins stories
Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

A collection of six interconnected Easy Rawlins short mysteries includes "Smoke," "Crimson Stain," "Silver Lining," "Lavender," "Gator Green," and "Untitled."

New York: Atria Books, 2003, 256 p.

Booklist Review: Easy Rawlins is 44 and working a steady job as head custodian at Sojourner Truth Junior High School; mourning the death of his friend Mouse; caring for his adopted children, Jesus and Feather; and pining for his live-in girlfriend, Bonnie. But this "guy who trades in favors"--really an unofficial detective who helps those who can't go to the police--isn't ready to live the quiet life. As he works a variety of cases involving theft, blackmail, and usually murder, the ghost of his violent alter ego Mouse seems to be flitting about the periphery--Is he really dead?--and Easy's sense of unease is compounded by deep insecurity in his relationship with the woman he loves. This collection of related short stories has an unusual lineage: all but the last, "Amber Gate," were first published in Washington Square Press reissues of all six classic Easy Rawlins mysteries this year (Six Easy Pieces picks up just after the time of 1996's A Little Yellow Dog). Collecting them so soon would feel more like a marketing ploy if they didn't work so well together; despite periodic recaps of the action-to-date, the book reads like an episodic novel. Mosley is as fine as ever, offering compelling commentary on black-white relations in 1964, writing in a style so simple that it deceives us into thinking writing great fiction is as easy as putting one foot in front of the other. It's not, but turning these pages is.
(Reviewed December 1, 2002) -- Keir Graff

Publishers Weekly Review: Fans of Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries received a bonus when Washington Square recently reissued in trade paper the six novels that preceded the latest one, Bad Boy Brawly Brown(2002). Each reprint contained an original short story featuring Easy. Now, those stories and a seventh never before published have been gathered together in a volume that's something of a patchwork but still vintage Mosley. In his mid-forties, with a makeshift but tight family and a respectable and responsible job, Easy no longer needs to depend on trading favors to earn a living. But these stories reflect a more restless and reckless man—one who finds himself being drawn to the street life he thought he had left behind. Energized and unsettled by rumors that the dangerous and unpredictable Raymond Alexander, better known as Mouse, might still be alive, Easy undertakes to determine the truth. That extended search also finds Easy undertaking a number of jobs that recall his forte of being a black man more capable than most of dealing with the volatile intersection of blacks and whites in Los Angeles. In short order he investigates arson, murder, a missing person and other crimes. The linked stories form an extended search not only for Mouse but also for answers as Easy confronts the familiar demons of mid-life crisis. Easy occupies center stage, surrounded by a stellar cast of both new and familiar characters, while the spirit of Mouse hovers enticingly nearby. (Jan.)
— Staff (Reviewed December 16, 2002) (Publishers Weekly, vol 249, issue 50, p49)

Library Journal Review: /* Starred Review */ For Easy Rawlins fans, a new installment is an eagerly awaited treat, but a second volume on the heels of the recent Bad Boy Brawley Brown is a Christmas and birthday present rolled into one. Despite the title, this collection actually sports seven short stories, six of which appeared in Washington Square Press's 2002 reprints of the Easy novels, with the seventh bonus story unique to this volume. Each features its own crime, investigation, and solution, but there are common elements throughout the stories that also allow this book to function as a loosely knit novel. Recent Rawlins outings expounded on the black experience in America. These grittier pieces, however, focus more on the mystery. Easy also of late has been struggling to escape his street life for legitimate work and an adopted family, but here has found a comfortable balance between dealing with killers and raising his kids. Mosley throws a lucky seven with this rock solid addition to the Easy Rawlins series. Highly recommended.—Michael Rogers, "Library Journal" (Reviewed January 15, 2003) (Library Journal, vol 128, issue 1, p164)

Kirkus Reviews Even though six of the seven color-coded stories here have already appeared as pendants to recent paperback reprints of Mosley's first six Easy Rawlins novels, it's a special pleasure to have them all gathered together with the brand-new "Amber Gate," whose inquiry into the murder of much-loved prostitute Jackie Jay makes it the closest thing to a whodunit Mosley (Bad Boy Brawly Brown, p. 709, etc.) has yet produced. True, the tales, covering a few months in Watts in 1964, revisit much the same territory over and over: Easy's asked by a trusting friend to find some missing relative or clear an acquaintance suspected of some crime, descends into a demi-criminal underworld, triggers an outburst of cathartic violence, and then goes back to his job as janitorial supervisor at Sojourner Truth Junior High. By bundling them together, however, Mosley strengthens the links among them: Easy's struggle to find dignity in his work and provide a role model for his two children and his quiet jealousy when his stewardess lover Bonnie Shay is romanced by the activist son of a Senegalese chief. In "Smoke," the first and best of the stories, Easy tries masquerading as his friend Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, presumed but not proved dead, to get to the bottom of a fire at Sojourner Truth, but has to face the fact that he's hamstrung by his un-Mouselike reluctance to hurt and kill. As Easy's alter ego, Mouse continues to haunt the others as well.

Despite the repetition, readers who missed these meaty, powerful stories in their paperback debuts will gobble them up at one sitting.
(Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2002)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

Other related features:

1. Annotated Book List - Popular African-American Fiction

Author Web Sites:
1. About Walter Mosley : A biography of the author and information on his books.
2. Walter Mosley : Features biographical and bibliographical information on Mosley.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0743442520
0743442547 : Paperback
1559279168 : CD - Audio
155927915X : Cassette - Audio
1417651407 : Glued Binding

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20030120
• TID: 010217

Walkin' the dog

Author: Mosley, Walter

Socrates Fortlow is back in a series of stories exploring life outside the law in modern-day Los Angeles.

Booklist Review: /*Starred Review*/ In Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997), ex-con and convicted murderer Socrates Fortlow fought a kind of rear-guard action to bring a little kindness into the troubled lives of the people around him in his besieged Watts neighborhood: a few vials of morphine, acquired from a pusher, to ease the pain of a friend's prostate cancer; safe haven for one teenage boy, at risk from the local gangbangers. Almost in spite of himself, the 59-year-old Socrates now feels compelled to do more. As his personal situation improves--a new job as produce manager in a grocery story, a real apartment rather than makeshift digs in an abandoned building--Socrates finds himself more and more troubled by the pain he sees on the street. In this second volume of interconnected stories, Mosley gives the Socrates Fortlow saga a new political dimension. As Socrates debates questions of race and responsibility with his friends from the neighborhood, his anger rises, and he must struggle again with the violence that lurks in his "rock-breaking" hands. But Socrates goes another way, risking his hard-won security to expose the evils perpetuated by a rogue cop. Overtly political fiction is desperately difficult to pull off; nothing saps the life from an author's characters as fast as an author's message. Mosley avoids this lethal trap by portraying Socrates' commitment to help change his neighborhood as the inevitable result of a single individual's agony rather than the triumph of an idea. If we hear a little of Tom Joad in Socrates' declaration that he's "gonna do somethin'," we also feel Ma Joad's melancholy, her yearning for safety. Mosley's triumph is that, in telling the story of a saint, he makes us wish the saint was free to be a man. ((Reviewed July 1999)) -- Bill Ott

Publishers Weekly Review: Mosley can readily manage more than one empathetic series hero, and in Socrates Fortlow, introduced in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, he has a winner. Socrates is a former jailbird doing his best to go straight in a seamy Los Angeles full of temptation, and the novel is an examination, as powerfully relaxed as Socrates himself, of how his life works. He lives in a tiny shack in a back alley in Watts, tries to stay out of the way of the ever-suspicious cops, does a little loving (the cheerful sensuality of Mosley's writing about sex strikes exactly the right note), unwittingly acts as a role model for an unhappy teenager and eventually becomes a national symbol for his placard-wielding protest against police brutality. Where some writers would make this the pivot of their plot, it is no more than incidental to this tale, as Socrates continues to go on his quiet, unostentatious way until the fuss dies down. This is a deceptively low-key book that sneaks up on a reader with the realization of how much can be revealed by artfully chosen, dead-accurate dialogue, and how fully a uniquely admirable and always unexpected personality has been brought to life. Time Warner audio; 6-city author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal Review: "This is life, Lydell. Life. What's done is done. You still responsible, you cain't never make it up, but you got to try" philosophizes ex-con protagonist Socrates Fortlow, whose story began in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. In this installment, Fortlow, a powder keg of a man with a hair-trigger temper who must apply every ounce of self-restraint his mind can muster in order to control his violent body, becomes an unlikely social avenger, unintentionally starting a riot in protest against a rogue cop who kills and rapes blacks seemingly for fun. In terms of plot, the book is disjointed, mostly following Fortlow's workaday life. The true soul of the book seems to be the pondering of the relationship between the races; there is a Steinbeck-esque edge to Fortlow's musings on black vs. white and rich vs. poor, and he displays shades of Tom Joad, another convicted killer who desires a better world. Much of the philosophizing is perhaps a tad deep for an uneducated jailbird, but Mosley should get credit for addressing this neglected segment of society. Recommended.--Michael Rogers, "Library Journal" Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ Mosley's probing and stirring follow-up to Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997) presents a dozen further adventures of Socrates Fortlow, the ex-con struggling to protect his marginal, yet deeply rooted, life in blasted Watts. Despite their resolute refusal of melodrama, "adventures" is the word for these episodes, because Socrates is so far from the American dream of upward mobility that he never changes anything in his life—moving up to a new job as produce manager at the Bounty Market, moving out of his rent-free alley squat to a proper home—unless he feels he has to. It's an adventure for Socrates to plant a tree and sleep with a woman in memory of a jailhouse friend, or to follow the sound of a sad jazz horn to its source, or to invite the Wednesday night discussion group that usually meets at Topper Saint-Paul's funeral home to his house and tell them the story of a slave revolt in long-ago Louisiana. Once he's laid down the rhythms of Socrates's life in a spare prose that makes it clear what a gift it is to be "safe at least for one night more," Mosley describes his hero's run-ins with criminals and the law in the same matter-of-fact way, shorn of the self-seriousness that sank his sci-fi thriller Blue Light (1998). Socrates kills a mugger and waits for the police to come and get him; even though they've been all over him for every crime in the neighborhood for months, they leave him unsettlingly alone. The casual reminiscences of another ex-con shake him so deeply that he disconnects his newly installed phone and gets an unlisted number. Finally, he goes up against a killer cop in a climactic story that shapes the series more firmly than Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned without going for easy answers or easy sentiment. Delicately balancing the demands of individual stories and the whole cycle, Mosley uses his perpetually angry, sensitive hero to show that "bravery ain't no big thing . . . . It's love that gives life." (Author tour)
(Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 1999)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

Other related features:

1. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> Booklist Editors' Choice -> Best Fiction 1999

Author Web Sites:
1. About Walter Mosley : A biography of the author and information on his books.
2. Walter Mosley : Features biographical and bibliographical information on Mosley.

Other titles associated with this book:
Walking the dog

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0316966207 : Hardcover - Print on Demand
0316881716 : Paperback
1570427100 : Cassette - Audio
0783889615 : Hardcover - Large Print
0783889623 : Paperback
0788737686 : Cassette - Audio

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• MetaMetrics, Inc.
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046389

Wave, The
Walter Mosley

Author: Mosley, Walter

Receiving a bizarre prank call from someone claiming to be his dead father, Errol visits the graveyard where his father is buried and makes an astonishing discovery about a supernatural presence that is spreading throughout the planet.

New York: Warner Books, 2006, 209 p.

Booklist Review: Mosleys wandered off turf again, writing imitation Dean Koontz and calling it science fiction. Out-of-work programmer Errol Porter lives in his former garage since his wife ditched him and the house was sold. For work he maintains a pottery shop, where he has struck up a relationship with artist Nella, which is good because it gives him someone to tell about the weird phone calls hes been getting from a guy who sounds like his nine-years-dead father. He discovers it is his dad, but hes only 20 and says that he really just embodies Errols fathers memories and is actually part of the wave that a meteor brought to earth one and a half billion years ago. Goofy, Errol thinks, until he is hauled away by a secret army operation that already knows about the wave because of other reanimated dead people. The armys bent on destroying the revenants and every other manifestation of the wave, including Errol if they find he has been infected. Errol escapes and joins the wave people in fleeing and trying to hide their life source. In the process, Errol boffs several other women, gets buff, and writes this first-person account. The (mercifully undetailed) sex seems gratuitous, the wave business feels mushy, Errols captivity and escape are like scenes from a dull-witted fifties sci-fi flick, and the characters arent even strong cardboard. For Mosley completists only. -- Ray Olson (Reviewed 10-15-2005) (Booklist, vol 102, number 4, p5)

Publishers Weekly Review: Bestseller Mosley's latest foray into allegorical SF is reminiscent of his 1998 novel, Blue Light, but it isn't nearly as rich and captivating. How should the book's hero, Errol, react when his late, beloved father reappears as a younger, ecstatic, incomplete version of the father's former self? How should the government respond when nearly invincible reanimated bodies claiming to be portions of a primordial life-form appear in our midst, out of an immense wave? And how can that life-form, which strives only for harmony, connect with us if it can't make itself understood to the fanatical military doctor, who takes Errol and his father prisoner, and is developing a poison to exterminate the peaceful newly arisen dead lest they overwhelm the human population? Mosley fails to sustain the deep, meaningful tone that would have brought this pensive tale to life. Even various sexual encounters and communions with the vast universe lack passion. This wave is fast and small, but it leaves little behind in its wake. (Jan.) --Staff (Reviewed November 7, 2005) (Publishers Weekly, vol 252, issue 44, p58)

Library Journal Review: Established writer Mosley's (after Futureland) new sf novel opens with programmer-turned-potter Errol ???Airy??? Porter receiving a strange phone call from the cemetery where his father is buried. When he visits the cemetery, he meets his reincarnated father???or someone very much like him. Set in the Los Angeles area and told from the black protagonist's point of view, this book evokes the Easy Rawlins mystery novels (e.g., Devil in a Blue Dress), though the era is the gritty present. The titular ???wave??? refers to a colony that formed millions of years ago, when simple cells were driven into the Earth's core by a comet. As Porter's???and the colony's???adventures unfold, Mosley explores some of the themes of human purpose and limitations that run through Blue Light, another one of his adult sf works. The sf aspect of this novel is less well developed than the contemporary setting and the frightening and illuminating situations into which Porter is thrown. However, the taut story will hold readers' interest and is recommended for public and academic libraries.???Sara Tompson, Univ. of Southern California Lib., Los Angeles --Sara Tompson (Reviewed January 15, 2006) (Library Journal, vol 131, issue 1, p105)

Kirkus Reviews The apparent resurrection of his dead father is only the beginning of an unemployed system administrator's fantastic confrontation with forces that could change the destiny of the planet.

It begins with a series of crank calls from someone claiming to be Errol Porter's father, dead and buried since 1996. What's unnerving is that although the caller sounds increasingly like Arthur Bontemps Porter III and seems to know things only Errol's dad could know, he looks, when Errol meets him face to face, like a much younger man. Errol wonders just what this unearthly visitation foretells. Is the man Errol dubs "Good Times," or "GT," a ghost, a reincarnation or a fake? None of the above, says Dr. David Wheeler, a physician who's become a high-ranking officer in the U.S. Army. Under the auspices of Homeland Security, Wheeler pulls Errol in and imprisons him in his own home, where his wife uses Errol for sex as Wheeler looks for ways to deal with what he's convinced is a massive invasion of parasitic "demons from hell" who assume human form with the aim of colonizing the earth and reducing humans to helpless hosts. Whom can Errol trust, the federal government or an impossible version of his father? As the stakes continue to rise, the carefully controlled emotional conflicts Mosley (Cinnamon Kiss, 2005, etc.) has woven begin to scatter like fragments of an exploding star.

Even so, Mosley's third foray into sci-fi (Futureland, 2001, etc.) is as provocative and deeply felt as ever, right down to the enigmatic ending.
(Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2005)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

Author Web Sites:
1. About Walter Mosley : A biography of the author and information on his books.
2. Walter Mosley : Features biographical and bibliographical information on Mosley.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0446533637
0446618187 : Paperback - Mass Market
1598870092 : CD - Audio
078628398X : Hardcover - Large Print

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20051120
• TID: 138679

White butterfly

Author: Mosley, Walter

Easy Rawlins helps his loyal friend Mouse in 1958 when Mouse is accused of killing bar girls in Los Angeles.

Booklist Review: /*STARRED REVIEW*/ His name may be Easy, but his life is anything but. This third installment in Mosley's celebrated Easy Rawlins series is set in the late 1950s and finds the reluctant black sleuth recently married and a new father but determined to hide both his landlord status and his detecting exploits from his new wife and child. It doesn't work according to plan, as the LAPD comes calling, enlisting Easy's help in finding a serial murderer whose victims, once limited to black prostitutes, have seemingly extended to a white coed. Enraged by officaldom's blatant racism (the crimes were unimportant until the color of the victims changed), Easy angers the police brass with both his attitude and his findings: the coed had a secret life, and her murderer may have been a copycat killer. The unique quality that has made this series a winner--its subtle evocation of the sense of community that connects the residents of LA's Watts district in the postwar period--is again the centerpiece here, but as the series develops, the central character is gradually stealing the spotlight from the books' setting. The sense of frustration that defines Easy's life is multifaceted: rather than alienate his impoverished black friends, he hides his successful real-estate ventures, pretending to be the janitor in buildings he actually owns; the strain this secrecy puts on his personal life becomes ever more destructive, especially when combined with the abuse he must absorb in dealing with the white world. Like Ralph Ellison's invisible man, Easy can only survive by subverting his own identity. That's quite a thematic load for the hero of a mystery series to shoulder, but Easy manages it easily. Watching this series develop is one of the principal pleasures of being a mystery fan these days. ((Reviewed May 15, 1992)) -- Bill Ott

Publishers Weekly Review: The third novel in Mosley's acclaimed series starring Easy Rawlins, a black PI who lives and works in the Watts section of L.A. in the 1950s, centers on the investigation of the murder of a white college coed who led a double life as a stripper. (July)

Library Journal Review: Black detective Easy Rawlins aids his dangerous-but-loyal friend Mouse, accused of killing several bar girls in 1958 Los Angeles. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/92.

Kirkus Reviews Watts sometime-detective Easy Rawlins (Devil in a Blue Dress, A Red Death) is married when Mosley picks up his tale in 1956, but he still hasn't settled down: He's never told his nurses'-aide wife Regina about the property he owns or how he spends his days, and the local law still leans on him for help when they're up against it. This time, a sex killer has taken a break from three low-profile snuffs of black women to murder UCLA cocci Robin Garnett, a.k.a. Cyndi Starr, the White Butterfly--a stripper who kept her scandalous public life very private--and the cops want answers they didn't care about before. Easy and his murderous friend Mouse drift through Morley's trademark bars, brothels, and Chinese laundries in LA. and S.F. in search of the police suspect, J. T. Saunders--but when the suspect is killed in a bar fight in front of his eyes, Easy smells a setup. As usual, plotting, setting, dialogue, and social comment are all as mannered as Raymond Chandler and--if the manner doesn't put you off--nearly as compelling.
(Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1992)

Features about this author or title:

1. Author Read-Alike - Walter Mosley

Author Web Sites:
1. About Walter Mosley : A biography of the author and information on his books.
2. Walter Mosley : Features biographical and bibliographical information on Mosley.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0671867873 : Paperback - Mass Market
0743451775 : Paperback
039303366X : Hardcover
0671019856 : Paperback
1559277203 : CD - Audio
1559272244 : Cassette - Audio
1559272716 : Cassette - Audio
1560547243 : Hardcover - Large Print
1417651415 : Glued Binding

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• American Historical Fiction: An Annotated Guide to Novels for Adults and Young Adults, published by Oryx Press
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046390