Nice and Easy...with a Convoluted Plot

Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another solid addition to the Easy Rawlins series.

I've read books from three of Walter Mosley's series and private detective Rawlins is so far my favorite character. He's old shoe comfort, easy like Sunday morning, and a good mix of thoughtful and tough. His courage makes sense and his honor is admirable.

I really like that these books are set just after LA's Watts riots of '65 when the city was in racial tumult. It adds tension to just about every scene.

Blonde Faith has a more convoluted plot than others in the series that I've read and I dug it. It played well off of Easy's concerns for his family.

Strongly recommended.

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Easy on the Hippies

Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery by Walter Mosley
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series is one of my "comfort food" reads. And it's not even a guilty pleasure like so many of my other comfort reads, because Mosley is a damn good writer and he's got it all going on with these books! I love the characters, setting, pacing, plotting...it's all good!

It's the late 60s in LA. Hippy culture is everywhere, but the peace and love message that started in San Francisco has got mixed up with weirdos, drugs and crime down in the City of Angels. Black detective and WWII vet Rawlins is just getting over a very serious car accident that put him out of commission for two months. He comes in and out of a coma like a junkie trying to get clean. Everything's a bit hazy at best.

As a favor for a friend, he goes looking for a missing young man on the Sunset Strip and comes into contact with all manner of colorful characters. You can tell Mosley is having fun reliving his memories of LA during this period. I believe he was finishing up high school in South Central at the time all this would have taken place. Much of his past has been poured into this series.

Little Green, the 12th Rawlins book, keeps this beautiful soul train rolling down the tracks. It's so very solid, yet it's not without fault. For one, the "mystery" is solved halfway through, and yet the story keeps going. Yes, there are reasons for it, but it does give a reader a strange feeling when you're midway through and you've essentially already arrived at the end, only to be told there's a new destination and you've got to keep going. But it's a minor quibble, because having to read more of this glorious writing is no chore!

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The West-Coast Block

Cinnamon Kiss by Walter Mosley
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I feel like a west coast version of Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series, I turn to Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series, and so far I haven't been let down.

Scudder is a white, middle-aged New Yorker, who's been through some shit.

Rawlins is a black, middle-aged Los Angeleno, who's been through some shit.

The narration of both relates a world-weary, experience-wise character with a plethora of baggage that keeps him simultaneously on edge as well as away from the edge, for who will care for their children or at least pay the child support should they act rash and get their head blown off?

Cinnamon Kiss is the tenth in the Rawlins series, which is set in the '60s. This one takes place in '66, so approximately a year after the Watts Riots and just as the hippie movement got going. Rawlins heads north to San Francisco to take on a high money case that could keep him from having to take part in a more lucrative, but more dangerous job: a heist that he would do if he had to, because his daughter is dying of a rare disease that would cost dearly to treat if it were even attempted.

As you see, Mosley is great at putting his MC's back straight up against the conflict wall. Human emotion and humanity's wide-ranging behavior infest everyone who walks through his scenes. There's barely a stiff to be found, unless we're talking about the dead kind.

I loved the look back at the Haight-Ashbury scene. I enjoyed how Mosley portrayed the older, war vet Rawlins as completely new to and somewhat baffled by these long-haired, free spirits. The mystery and detective work Rawlins is tasked with is quite contentious and plays hard upon the character's moral indignation. At times the book slides into heated romance that gets slightly pornographic to the point of feeling a bit out of place, but really it's just taking the old detective fiction of the '40s and '50s one step further than they were already treading.

Every time I finish one of Mosley's great books I always end up telling myself, "I need to read more Mosley!"


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It Ain't Easy, But It's All Right

The Long Fall by Walter Mosley
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A new series from Walter Mosley, huzzah!

Well, it's new to me. Mosley's been at the Leonid McGill series since 2009, about 20 years after he started putting out his popular Easy Rawlins books. But instead of rewinding time back to the race-war years of 1960s Los Angeles, The Long Fall takes us on a literary drive-by of a contemporary day-in-the-life of a New York City private investigator.

Leonid McGill, a 50 year old bruiser with a brain, must weave together a number of loose threads, some more deadly and personal than a PI's typical fare. Mosley's got a winning new character in McGill, putting together a nuanced portrait of a middle-aged man with a past, who's still left wondering what his future holds, if anything.

When I see someone review a book on Goodreads and they give it a three star rating, I'm seldom inspired to read that book. However, this sort of three star rating truly means what this website claims it to be, an I "liked it" kind of book. The Long Fall is not groundbreaking, but it is compelling. You want to keep reading. There's never a moment when you're afraid your brain might explode. Instead, it delivers the occasional and pleasurable pulse quickening moment - a common pace for Mosley's work it seems - which drives the plot along to the satisfying end.

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Fear and Confusion

Fear Itself by Walter Mosley
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm not a black man. Walter Mosley is, so I assume he's writing from experience and knows what he's talking about. As such, it's nice to read crime drama/detective stories with well-round portraits of black men and women, men and women that the reader can believe in.

Having said that, I didn't know what the hell was going on for half the time in Fear Itself. Now, part of that was intentional. Mosley held the old wool over my eyes for a while on purpose. On the other hand, there were times when the action and dialogue got somewhat muddied up, and I don't think that was intentional. This was not the strongest narrative story the author's ever composed, that's for sure.

It does have its strong points though. The Southern California setting description is enjoyable for someone like myself who's spent some time there. The eccentrics that pop up are delightful distractions.

Here's a point which I'm not sure falls under strong or weak point: the main character. The diminutive and mild-mannered Paris Minton, a bookshop owner, is no hero. In fact, at times he's a coward. However, when the chips are down, the man stands up. The anti-hero is all the rage in literature these days, but the Paris character doesn't feel like a bandwagoner. He seems like the genuine article underdog. He feels realistic. He doesn't always do the right thing. He wants to do the right thing, but he's generally more concerned for himself. I'm kind of disgusted by him at times. All that may have even lessened my overall enjoyment of the book, but by god, I respect Mosley for that!

If you haven't figured it out by now, I like Walter Mosley. From what I've read, his books may not go down amongst the great literary works of our time. They should, however, be considered as valuable in their own right.



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Easy Rawlins Is Back From the Dead

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four out of five stars

At the end of his last outing, 2007's Blonde Faith, Easy Rawlins went flying off a cliff in his car, presumably plunging to his death on the rocks below. Happily, that proved not to be the case. After everyone else had given up hope, Easy's best friend, Raymond, "Mouse" Alexander, comes struggling back up to the highway, bearing Easy's broken body on his shoulders. Easy remains in a semi-coma for some time, and when he finally awakens, he's really not sure whether he's dead or alive.

As one might imagine, after being so badly injured and after being in bed for so long, Easy is weak as a kitten and still in a lot of pain. Nonetheless, Mouse persuades Easy to rise from his sickbed, against the advice of everyone else, and go searching for a missing boy, Evander Noon, whom Mouse refers to as "Little Green." The relationship between Mouse and Little Green is more than a little mysterious, but Easy agrees to take on the job.

Given that he can hardly walk more than a few steps at a time, it would appear that Easy has his work cut out for him. Fortunately, a witchy woman named Mama Jo fixes him up with several vials of a "medicine" she calls Gator's Blood. One shot in the morning will restore Easy's strength for an entire day and so he's good to go.

Little Green was last seen headed for the Sunset Strip and so that's where Easy begins his investigation. It's 1967, the dawn of a new age in America. Hippies are everywhere; free love and the smell of good dope are in the air, and Easy isn't sure what to make of it all. Of course it's also shortly after the infamous Watts Riots and Easy is still well aware of his tenuous place as a black man in a white society, where many, including a lot of cops, are not yet ready to recognize him as an equal citizen.

Inevitably, the disappearance of Little Green will turn into a much larger and more sinister affair. The case itself is only marginally interesting, but as is always the case in these books, the real pleasure lies in watching Easy navigate his way through the larger world around him. Mosley writes brilliantly and, through his protagonist, has a great deal to say about the culture and society of the Sixties. It's great to have Easy and his surrounding cast finally back again.