Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins Mysteries)
by Walter Mosley
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Book Summary Information
Author: Walter MosleyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-09-17
ISBN: 0743451791
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Book Reviews of Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins Mysteries)
Book Review: Devil in a Blue Dress
Summary: 4 Stars
I had the opportunity to read Walter Mosley's novel "Devil in a Blue Dress" (1990) when it was presented as part of a Black Voices reading group at the local public library. It was my first experience with the author. Mosley (b. 1952) is best-known for his series of noir mysteries featuring a tough African American detective named Easy (Exekiel) Rawlins. Although I have some familiarity with noir, this book was also the first I have read with an African American protagonist and a predominantly African American setting. "Devil in a Blue Dress" was the Mosley's first novel. In 1995, it became a movie starring Denzil Washington.
The story is set in the Watts area of Los Angeles in 1948. The hero, Easy Rawlins, immigrated to Los Angeles from an even rougher area in Houston. He saw extensive combat experience in WW II where he was fearsome in hand-to-hand combat and killed many German soldiers. Rawlins wants a peaceful, successful life. He completes his high school education and contemplates college. He gets a good job as a machinist in an aircraft production plant and saves enough money to buy a small house with a garden which he loves. Due to an altercation with his boss, Rawlins is fired and fears he will not be able to meet his monthly mortgage payment.
In his leisure time, Rawlins drinks at a small out-of-the way bar owned by an ex-boxer, Joppy. Joppy introduces Rawlins to a white man, DeWitt Albright of questionable business and connections. Albright offers to pay Rawlins for information about the location of a young white woman, Daphne Monet, who is known to frequent African American establishments in the Watts area.
With misgivings, Rawlins accepts the job and gradually realizes the trouble he has brought on himself. Finding Daphne brings Rawlins into a complex picture of murders, double-crosses and mysteries. Along the way, Rawlins is arrested and beaten by the Los Angeles police and nearly loses his life at the hands of several competing parties with their own reasons for finding Daphne. Several of Rawlins' friends are killed. In the process of the tale, Rawlins introduces a welter of sinister yet fascinating characters including Rawlins' violent friend "Mouse", Albright, and Daphne herself. The plot is tangled.
Character development and atmospheric portrayal of late 1940's Los Angeles are much more important to this book than plot development. The book offers a grittily realistic portrayal of African American life in the Watts of its time as the scene shifts among several bars, romming houses, brothels, liquor stores. Much of the story shows the nature of African American -- white relationships as Rawlins is harassed by the police, fired from his job, and thwarted in his efforts. Rawlins and Albright are in a way complimentary characters. Daphne is a pivotal figure in the racial tension developed in the novel.
The book makes highly effective use of African American speech patterns. "Easy" Rawlins develops and gains trust in himself during the book. He calls upon his war experience and his toughness to stay with the situation and not run away after he finds himself in over his head. At critical points in the story, he listens to an internal "voice" which tells him what to do. A basically conscientous and decent man, Rawlins learns to hold his head high and to do what he needs to do in the situations that present themselves.
The story is jambled but became relatively clear with close reading. The portrayal of Los Angeles life, the character development, and the observations about relationships between African Americans and whites, help bring this book to a level beyond noir fiction. I was glad of the opportunity to get to know this book.
Robin Friedman
Summary of Devil in a Blue Dress (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....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
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