Customer Reviews

Fearless Jones (Fearless Jones Novel, No.1)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Rather than reprising his popular central character, Easy Rawlins, deft wordsmith Walter Mosley introduces an equally intriguing hero - Fearless Jones. Again, Mosley shines at depicting black characters struggling to survive in an inhospitable white world.

When Paris Minton's book shop door opens and gorgeous Elan Love walks in, so does trouble. Paris is a laid back black man content to run his store in the Watts area of 1950s LA. He's ill prepared to deal with all the woes that beset him such as being used for gun shot practice, being robbed, and seeing his business go up in flames.

There's little choice for Paris except to send an SOS to his war veteran buddy, Fearless Jones - a man who more than lives up to his sobriquet. The pair embark on a surprise riddled chase fraught with excitement and danger.

TV and film actor Peter Francis James gives tension filled voice to this riveting thriller.

FEARLESS JONES, while a great book, is something of a misnomer when it comes to titling this novel. This book is more about a somewhat fearful Paris Minton.

Paris Minton is a guy we all know. He's a guy who gets afraid when a much larger man threatens him. He's a guy who immediately determines a woman's desireability factor when he meets them for the first time. He's a guy, who though is thoughtful, sometimes acts before he thinks, to his detriment. He's a guy who hopes for a better tomorrow, while wondering how to get through today. He's a guy who makes mistakes, often wishes he could run from them, but struggles to correct them. He's a guy who is ... sometimes a little over confident, sometimes a little underconfident, and often self-deprecating.

The mystery in this book is a good one. Often, it seems the mystery and plot take a back seat to social explorations of 1950's Los Angeles, but the book never lacks for those side journeys. Also, even though the mystery often plays a secondary role in this novel and some of the clues are easy to decipher, the payoff is as good, thrilling, and magnificent as anything you'll read this year.

The characters in this book are frighteningly real. The situations presented gave me pause as I read them, as I pondered what I might do in those situations. The suspense is strong. The story centers around a fortune in stolen money, a sometimes missing woman, and Jewish/African-American relations. I don't want to say too much about the details of this novel, because I feel there is nothing greater than discovering the secrets of a great book. Exposing even minor details destroys tiny moments of joy for a book reader, and believe me, there are many pieces of joy within this book.

If you are a Walter Mosley fan, you will cheer this book as an exemplary examply of his talents. If you are a mystery fan who has never read Mosley, you would do yourself a huge favor to pick this book, the first to feature these characters, to join the Walter Mosley bandwagon. If you like period novels, you owe it to yourself to experience this slice of Americana.

Awestruck, Earl

"When me and my squad'd go out in Germany it was always the first man get killed get to us," he said in an impossibly calm voice. "Didn't matter if it was one'a us or one'a them. It's just that first dead man that reminds you that this is serious business." -From Fearless Jones

And it definitely is serious business for Paris Minton and his titular pal, Fearless Jones. I started reading Walter Mosley with his first Easy Rawlins novel, Devil in a Blue Dress. I enjoyed the tight writing and the very different viewpoint character. By the time Black Betty came out though, I felt that Easy had begun to run out of steam and I took a pass on the next couple of books by Mosley. Then I saw that Mosley had a new novel out featuring a new protagonist and I decided to give it a try. I'm REALLY glad that I did. In Fearless Jones Mosley takes us to the mean streets of Fifties era Los Angeles. Forget James Ellroy. No one has written about the sun blighted City of Angels with this much sheer pain and poetry since Raymond Chandler. Mosley makes you feel the tensions, be they racial, political, sexual, or whatever. It comes across. His prose is more stripped down than ever and it carries the story along quickly and with no wasted verbiage. Paris shares some similarities with Easy Rawlins but he's very much his own man. And Fearless? He's almost as dangerous as Easy's pal Mouse, but a lot nicer to be around. He's got an almost knight-like sense of honor and loyalty. (I suspect it's no accident that his first name is Tristan.) This is great crime fiction. I hope to see more of Paris and Fearless in the future. And maybe I'll go back and read the Mosley books I passed over.

Paris Minton is an unlikely protagonist for a mystery novel. An African American man, approaching middle age, he runs a used bookstore in a 1950s LA ghetto. He doesn't make much money from his business, but that's not why he has the shop. He just wants the chance to read his books and be left alone. That dream ends the day a beautiful woman named Elana Love walks in the door. "Fearless Jones" features an improbable hero, perhaps, but a classic setup for a hardboiled story.

The comparisons to Mosley's brilliant Easy Rawlins series are natural and deserved. Both are set in similar times and deal with similar themes. The character of Paris Minton, though, adds a new dimension to the story. A thoughtful, literate man, he's not very handy with his fists, awkward with guns, and a patsy for a gorgeous woman. Most hard-boiled characters are just that: hard. Paris, though, is far softer than most, and more interesting for it.

"Fearless Jones" once again demonstrates that Walter Mosley is one of the finest writers working today. His sharp eye for race relations, human nature, and the changing face of America would be excellent contributions to any novel. When added to a solid, engrossing mystery, they take his work to a higher level that few can match. Mosley is a treasure who should be read by all.

Previously, the only contemporary novelist whose works I picked up without prior qualifying information, even if all that entailed was perusal of the the book jacket, was Walter Mosley. As an example, I just assumed Socrates Fortlow was working on a chain gang because he decided to take an excursion back to Indiana and was arrested. So now, I at least make an effort to determine if the book is fictional; I have yet to be disappointed (and my assessment does include BLUE LIGHT) by any of his books. FEARLESS JONES is another impressive offering.

It appears Mr. Mosley cannot escape comparisons to Hammett, Chandler, MacDonald, and in many quarters, Himes and Goines. At this juncture, his immense talent has transcended the noir detective mystery genre; he is a nonpareil storyteller but human nature seems to demand the real value of one commodity can only be defined in terms of a peer product. With the advent of new protagonists Tristan Jones and Paris Minton, Mr. Mosley has affixed the 'early Mosley' to the list.

This book has much of the aura and appeal of the Rawlins series; at times I found myself in anticipation of an encounter with Easy or Mouse at the jailhouse; in one of the afterhours joints or by mutual acquiantance with a peripheral character introduced in this story (No, it did not happen). Paris the diminutive, bookwormish shopkeeper serves as the narrator; he and Fearless comprise a new 'buddy' team destined to grace several tales. As this story of the search for a mysterious, manipulative and intimidatingly attractive woman named Elana Love progressed, I sensed many of the characteristics so familiar to Easy and Mouse now engendered in Paris and Fearless, though not necessarily as mirror images or juxtaposed characters from different novels.

Mr. Mosley infuses more wry wit and self-deprecating humor in Paris' characteriztion than I recall from any person appearing in prior books. Fearless is the dedicated, non-judgmental friend I think we all aspire to know at least once in our lifetimes, hopefully with appreciably less of a propensity to attract lethal entanglements. The duo is perfectly complementary. Where Paris is restrained, marginally unconfident and somewhat self-absorbed, Fearless is volatile, decisive and curiously altruistic.

With his trenchant prose, Mr. Mosley injects more social commentary than was evident in the earlier series but he never loses sight of the fact he is spinning a tale rather than espousing a philosophy. It is an astonishingly quick read, with multiple action sequences but regrettably, also a few flaws, some on the penumbra but a couple within the critical path which I will not address since the book is a mystery and the few missteps are not sufficiently consequential to significantly diminish cumulative value. The ending, however, in my opinion is far too compressed. Truncation was unneccessary to set up the next book and at just over 300 pages the addition of another 50-75 so to effectively wrap the package in a more satisfying manner would not have been unwelcome.

With that caveat, FEARLESS JONES, is a grand introduction to what I expect to be a great new series from Mr. Mosley.

this novel closely parallels "devil in a blue dress," switching the roles a bit. instead of easy rollins out finding justice with his tough little pal mouse, it's little pal paris minton with his tough buddy fearless jones out trying to find the same. poor paris gets roped into some bad luck when a misunderstanding gets his bookstore burned down in 1950's california. basically, paris feels cheated, no livlihood and no home as he lived in his store, and refuses to go out like a sucker. he gets his tough best friend fearless jones to help him find the villians that are trying to keep him down and they fully expect to get what they have coming to them.

this is no ordinary day in a black man's life, but it is written as such. the layman reading this piece might even feel like black men had to deal with garbage like this every day. though that was not the case, it wasn't far from it let me tell you. reading this gives a lot of insight to those not in the know and moseley is one of those rare writers who chooses to educate us while entertaining us. the lingo is indicative of the era and the characters are nicely fleshed out. ironically enough, fearless jones was my least favorite, probably because it wasn't really about him to begin with. he plays out like this hardcase with a heart of gold, brandishing his own private view of right and wrong.

paris is the real deal here. a mealy-mouthed sort with no real manly confidence, but he's not about to take his new misgiving lying down. he's no tough guy so he gets his tough guy friend to help. but by the end of the story, he changes nicely for the better and it was nice to see the little guy get some guts. there is also a lot in there about a strange relationship the guys strike up with an older jewish couple, which i found pretty charming in the face of the rampant bigotry of the time.

just like mosely to put together an intriguing whodunnit filled with pitfalls and plot switches at every turn. nice read here for when there's just nothing on the tube.

Fearless Jones is a thriller, yes, but it is also a story about friendship and courage. The novel is narrated by Paris Minton, a black bookstore owner in 1954 Watts. Minton is not a troublemaker and has a hard time understanding why his friend, war hero Fearless Jones, always seems to attract trouble. When trouble--in the person of Elana Love--arrives quite uninvited in Minton's own bookstore, though, understanding begins to dawn.

No sooner has Love walked into Minton's life than he is brutally assaulted by her pursuer, then seduced, robbed, and abandoned by Miss Love herself. When Minton returns to his bookstore the next day, he finds it a pile of ash and rubble. Not knowing where else to turn, he finally relents and bails his friend Fearless out of jail. That's when the action really heats up.

The plot is far too complex for me to try to boil down into a few short paragraphs, and that is one thing I love about Mosley's books. There is so much coming from all directions that there is no sense of a scenario manufactured for tidy wrap-up by page 300. The characters are also so well developed that you can imagine them going about their off-page lives even when Paris isn't around to tell us about it.

As Paris and Fearless try to unravel the mess, it entangles them in the lives of a Jewish immigrant family, a chase after the spoils of war, a variety of fraudulent schemes, and a violent power struggle within a mysterious religious organization--the one Elana Love was looking for when she found Paris by mistake. They do manage to sort things out eventually, and that in itself is a fascinating adventure. Just as exciting, however, are the lessons in loyalty and betrayal.

(adapted from a "Skullduggery" review)

Paris Minton has it made--he owns a used bookstore so he can read all day and he's one of the few black entrepeneurs in the 1950s Watts (Los Angeles). When a beautiful woman walks into his shop, though, he knows he is in trouble--and boy is he right.

Fortunately, Paris has a friend who can deal with trouble. Once he bails Fearless Jones out of jail, he has a fighting chance and the two of them spend the rest of this fine novel battling for their lives, and trying to uncover the secret to a suspected multimillion dollar fortune.

Author Walter Mosley does a wonderful job describing black life in the 1950s--where police brutality against blacks was expected and where driving with a white woman could get a black man lynched. Even better, Mosley develops two characters in Paris and Fearless who, although completely different, both pursue their goals of justice despite terrible obstacles.

I found FEARLESS JONES to be a riveting mystery. The novel is not perfect--the mystery had a few loose ends I would have liked to see wrapped up, but these are minor quibbles that shouldn't interfere with the reader's enjoyment.

Excellent and highly recommended.<P

When I read the jacket for Fearless Jones I immediately wanted to compare Paris and Fearless to Easy Rawlings and Mouse. The characters seemed to be the same: straight and arrow and the wild guy with L.A. as a backdrop.
I have seen the errors of my ways and have gladly welcomed Fearless Jones into my library. Paris Minton is literally minding his own business when trouble in the form of Elana Love comes walking through the door. As Paris and Fearless search for Elana they get caught up in a web of lies and thieves searching for a lost treasure.
Set in the 1950's Mosley delivers a great period piece. The characters are developed and they feel "real". Each page left me wanting more. If you are looking for a good mystery and are tired of the same cookie cutter factory drivel that seems to be the norm, here is the book for you.

This is the first time I read anything by Walter Mosely and I was very impressed. Fearless Jones ran like one of the those early black exploitation films like Coffy or Shaft, as far as being fast paced without the usual cheese. There was a bit of social commentary that may turn some people off but overall it's a great read. I read it in a day.