GONE FISHIN'. [Paperback]

Walter. Mosley (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: BALTIMORE: BLACK CLASSIC PRESS. 1997; Lrg edition (1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786210613
• ISBN-13: 978-0786210619
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,078,255 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Genre for Walter Mosley, May 3, 2000

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gone Fishin': An Easy Rawlins Novel (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) (Hardcover)

Great detective story writers can rise to being solid novelists. Ross MacDonald was clearly in this category. With Gone Fishin', Walter Mosley has attained that distinction in a new way -- he has gone into a new fictional genre.

Although this novel has the usual crime overlay, it is really a novel about coming of age in the South as a black person before the days of integration. With few books available on this subject, I suspect that Mosley may have set the standard for other authors to meet.

For me, a lot of the charm of the Easy Rawlins stories is their historical setting in the more prejudiced days of the past. How does an intelligent, honorable black person deal with this? The stories are interesting for both what they say about society and for the great plots and character development.

This book, a prequel to the others in the series, does the same, but in a different setting -- far a way from Southern California.

I found it to be an excellent gothic novel, and encourage you to read it as such. If you open this book expecting another Easy Rawlins detective story, you may be disappointed. On the other hand, if you leave yourself open to what you find here, you will probably be rewarded. Moseley's fans need to live up to his talent, and follow him where his skills take him.

If you have not read the Walter Mosley books before, I suggest you start with this one. You'll make more sense out of the rest of the series. You'll also be less likely to be disturbed by the shift in genre. Anyone who enjoys this book will find the detective novels to be an easy follow on.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars pleasant change of pace for Easy & Mouse, November 22, 2000

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: GONE FISHIN: Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Smoke" (Paperback)

Having chronicled Easy's adventures from the '40s to the '60s, Mosley jumps back in time to when easy and Mouse were 19 year olds on the threshhold of manhood. Mouse is about to marry Etta Mae & wants to bring a dowry to the marriage. He decides to go ask his stepfather for some money & things don't work out real well.

This series has been consistently excellent & it's fun to see the characters as young men.

GRADE: B

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars So-So Prequel to the Easy Rawlins Series, November 13, 2004

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gone Fishin': Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Smoke" (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) (Paperback)

If you've read the Easy Rawlins series, this prequel novella may come as a bit of a surprise. Set in 1939, when Easy is a naive and somewhat innocent 19, it's the story of him and Mouse taking a little road trip from Houston to the bayou country of Pariah, Texas. Mouse is planning to visit his fearsome stepfather to try and get some money out of him to finance his wedding to Etta-Mae. Easy is enlisted as driver on this enterprise, and the tone turns dark right away, when they pick up a hitchhiking young couple. The man is on the run for having possibly beaten another man to death in a bar fight, and his girl is a sexy little flirt who seems to enjoy having men argue over her. Mouse convinces them to let him help, and you know the only thing that will come of it is sex and violence. Mouse leads them all deep into the back country to stay with a strange old witch-like woman, who mixes them potions and weaves a different kind of magic on Easy. Instead of the straightforward realistic crime story readers of the series might expect, this is an atmospheric and sometimes surreal gothic tale. Even in such a brief story, Mosley manages to cram in a lot of characters with their own stories, but it all boils down to Mouse's quest for a portion of his mother's dowry. Of course, everything climaxes in violence, and this so unsettles Easy that he is spurred to leave Houston and join the Army. It's not so much a coming of age story as a loss of innocence one.