Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) [Paperback]

Walter Mosley (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 24, 2002 | Series: Easy Rawlins Mysteries

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs....

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins has few illusions about the world--at least not about the world of a young black veteran in the late 1940s in Southern California. His stint in the Army didn't do anything to dissuade him from his belief that justice doesn't come cheap, especially for men like him. "I thought there might be some justice for a black man if he had money to grease it," Easy says. Fired from his job on the line at an aircraft plant, he's in danger of losing his home, symbol of his tenuous hold on middle class status. That's a good enough reason to accept a white man's offer to pay him for finding a beautiful, mysterious Frenchwoman named Daphne Monet, last seen in the company of a well-known gangster. Easy's search takes the reader to an L.A. few writers have shown us before--the mean streets of South Central, the after-hours joints in dirty basement clubs, the cheap hotels and furnished rooms, the places people go when they don't want to be found. Evocative of a past time, and told in a style that's reminiscent of Hammet and Chandler, yet uniquely his own, Mosley's depiction of an inherently decent man in a violent world of intrigue and corruption rang up big sales when it was published in 1990 (although the movie version, with Denzel Washington as Easy, never found the audience it deserved). The minor characters are deftly and brilliantly developed, especially Mouse, who saves Easy's life even as he draws him deeper into the mystery of Daphne Monet. Like many of Mosley's characters, Mouse makes a return appearance in the succeeding Easy Rawlins mysteries, such as A Red Death, Black Betty, and White Butterfly, every one of which is as good as Devil in a Blue Dress, his first. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Reissue of the first book in Moseley's Easy Rawlins mystery series, in which Easy is hired to track down a woman who disappeared with someone else's money.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press (September 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743451791
• ISBN-13: 978-0743451796
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,003 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Walter Mosley is one of America's most celebrated and beloved writers. His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones, Fear Itself, and Fear of the Dark; the novels Blue Light and RL's Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and Walkin' the Dog. He lives in New York City.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#55 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

#76 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery

#55 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

#76 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Mosley Makes a Solid Debut August 26, 1997

By David Montgomery VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

There aren't many good African American mystery writers and there are even fewer black private eyes that you'd want to read about. Walter Mosley and Easy Rawlins, however, satisfy both of those criteria in solid fashion.
More than that, though, this is simply a good, fun read .

The setting is Los Angeles in the 1940s, probably the most fruitful noir time and place there is. During those boom years of post-war expansion, a man could make a good living and even buy a place of his own.

That's all that Easy Rawlins wants. When he's laid-off, though, he can't make his mortgage. He's going to lose his house and he'd rather do almost anything than that. He finds, though, that he has to do more than he bargained for.

When a mysterious white man offers him $100 to find a missing white woman, it seems simple enough. Nothing, of course, is ever as it seems. Rawlins quickly finds himself in trouble and there is no easy way out. It takes a hardness that he tries to hide for him to come out alive.

For a first novel, this book is very solid with a lot of personality. Mosley captures a people and culture that we don't get to read much about. Easy is a good, fresh character; one of the best new entries to the mystery scene in a while.

This book is recommended to everyone who enjoys a good hard-boiled mystery, especially fans of Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, and Ross Macdonald

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Try Blue Dress On For Size May 5, 2003

By A. Wolverton VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Easy Rawlins is not the typical private detective, but he is the freshest one to come around in a long time. Easy is an African American WWII veteran from Texas, now living in 1948 L.A. where he proudly owns a modest home. The home is all he has to be proud of since he got fired from his job at a defense plant. Life for Easy is not easy at all. Then one day, a white man dressed in a white suit offers Easy good money to locate a beautiful blonde known to hang out at black clubs. For a man with a mortgage and no money coming in, the offer is too good to be true. But then offers like this usually are.

The plot sounds typical, but Mosley's writing is anything but. Mosley paints a clear and atmospheric picture of racial segregation in post-war L.A., but that picture is not overexposed. Easy not only has to endure the dangers of finding this girl, he must do it in a hostile background where white policemen and higher-ups look for any type of crime that they might pin on him. The story of the transplanted man from the south living on the west coast is not unfamiliar, but making him a black man facing prejudice on every side makes the story more alive and the plot more tension-filled. Again, this is not done in a heavy-handed way, but with a subtle touch that makes you want to turn the pages.

Mosley is very much at home with the hard-boiled style of crime noir and it shows on every page. This is not a Hammett or Chandler re-hash. This is a fresh, lively, exciting mystery from a very fine writer. If you haven't experienced Mosley and Easy Rawlins, pick up the Blue Dress and try it on for size.

215 pages

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Book, But Hardly A Masterpiece January 26, 2003

By A. Ross HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The first Easy Rawlins book is more enjoyable for its physical and cultural setting than it is for its mystery or characters. Set in Los Angeles a few years after WWII, Mosley does a masterful job of depicting a multiethnic city that's still a sleepy collection of neighborhoods in many senses, but has a distinctly seedy side (not unlike James Ellroy's LA Confidential). The story is about Easy, an ex-soldier who loses his job for standing up to his white boss at an aircraft manufacturing plant. Desperate for money so he can meet his mortgage and not lose his pride and joy of a house, he's offered a lot of money to look for a white woman who's been hanging out at illegal after-hours black clubs. Of course, he's not the only one looking, and soon he's up to his neck in bootleggers, crooked politicians, racist cops, and round-the-way girls.

In noir fashion, the mystery is fairly complicated, perhaps overly so with a number of minor characters who run together. As events move beyond Easy's grasp, he has to call on his old friend from Houston, Mouse, to help him out. Mouse is a thoroughly nasty bit of work, and there's some good tension between him and Easy. Ultimately, the "big" twist at the end isn't that surprising. The book is so thoroughly steeped in race that it's the only plausible solution to a number of thorny questions.

As an average hardworking black man, just trying to live with dignity in a racist world, Easy is well-drawn and sympathetic. What doesn't work as well is when he hears "the voice" inside his head, which appears at moments of stress and urges him not to take any [...] and stand up for himself. It's a device that's remarkably amateurish, given the solid control Mosley exhibits over the rest of the narrative. It should be noted that the book's female characters will probably not be to the taste of many female readers, and indeed, while Mosley seems to have a very clear comment to make about race, his take on gender is rather ambiguous.

It's a fine book, but nothing truly spectacular or new. It does a nice job of depicting LA at a certain time, but comparisons with Chandler and Ellison are a stretch, other than Chandler wrote in the same genre, and Ellison also wrote about race.