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Easy Rawlins #12
Little Green
When Walter Mosley burst onto the literary scene in 1990 with his first Easy Rawlins mystery, Devil in a Blue Dress—a combustible mixture of Raymond Chandler and Richard Wright—he captured the attention of hundreds of thousands of readers (including future president Bill Clinton). Eleven books later, Easy Rawlins is one of the few private eyes in contemporary crime fiction who can be called iconic and immortal. In the incendiary and fast-paced Little Green, he returns from the brink of death to investigate the dark side of L.A.’s 1960s hippie haven, the Sunset Strip.
We last saw Easy in 2007’s Blonde Faith, fighting for his life after his car plunges over a cliff. True to form, the tough WWII veteran survives, and soon his murderous sidekick Mouse has him back cruising the mean streets of L.A., in all their psychedelic 1967 glory, to look for a young black man, Evander “Little Green” Noon, who disappeared during an acid trip. Fueled by an elixir called Gator’s Blood, brewed by the conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual, and emotional resurrection, but peace and love soon give way to murder and mayhem. Written with Mosley’s signature grit and panache, this engrossing and atmospheric mystery is not only a trip back in time, it is also a tough-minded exploration of good and evil, and of the power of guilt and redemption. Once again, Easy asserts his reign over the City of (Fallen) Angels.
We last saw Easy in 2007’s Blonde Faith, fighting for his life after his car plunges over a cliff. True to form, the tough WWII veteran survives, and soon his murderous sidekick Mouse has him back cruising the mean streets of L.A., in all their psychedelic 1967 glory, to look for a young black man, Evander “Little Green” Noon, who disappeared during an acid trip. Fueled by an elixir called Gator’s Blood, brewed by the conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual, and emotional resurrection, but peace and love soon give way to murder and mayhem. Written with Mosley’s signature grit and panache, this engrossing and atmospheric mystery is not only a trip back in time, it is also a tough-minded exploration of good and evil, and of the power of guilt and redemption. Once again, Easy asserts his reign over the City of (Fallen) Angels.
305 pages, ebook
First published May 14, 2013
249 people are currently reading
2437 people want to read
About the author
Walter Mosley
203 books3,894 followersWalter Mosley (b. 1952) is the author of the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins, as well as numerous other works, from literary fiction and science fiction to a young adult novel and political monographs. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the Nation, among other publications. Mosley is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Grammy, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.
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September 27, 2016
Easy Rawlins has just woken up from a two month long semi-coma and he’s immediately tasked to track down a missing young man for his pal, Ray Alexander aka Mouse. Evander “Little Green” Noon was last seen on Sunset Strip, the Los Angeles home of the beatnik’s unwashed cousin, the hippie. Transitioning to barely mobile for Easy isn’t as smooth as Sunday morning, and he needs something to keep him on his feet, so he starts drinking a voodoo elixir called Gator’s Blood.
Rawlins is a black private investigator and Mosley’s walking polemic against the virulent racism that African-Americans endured in post-World War II Los Angeles. Each Rawlins novel not only features a different color in the title (like John MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels) but takes place during a different time period. The first book, the fine Devil in a Blue Dress, occurred in the late forties; this one offers a window into the height of the mid-sixties hippie/flower power era.
Some authors of the PI genre - Robert B. Parker, Sue Grafton – who have built up a hefty ouevre, start creating a supporting cast of characters that they like to parade out at a moment’s notice and deftly sprinkle amongest the pages but in this case it’s a double-edged sword. On one hand the reader is happy to see some old, familiar faces, but here the procession has a tendency to water down the main plot threads – “here’s that genius friend from book five, what the hell happened to that interesting hippie chick?”
Outside of Easy, Mosely’s finest creation is Mouse, Rawlins’ best friend since childhood – criminal, murderer, borderline psychopath – he’s like a venomous snake coiled and ready to strike in a pinch. He’s handy to have around, but his unpredictability amps up the tension.
Mosely is a fine writer and brings some skills to the P.I. genre. His insights into Rawlins’ pain, confusion and anger at being a black man in a white-dominated society that’s spirit crushing in its prejudices, is palpable and he’s got a terrific dry wit. This book starts off like gangbusters, but gets sidetracked about two-thirds of the way through by the aforementioned cavalcade of family, friends and others – e.g. let’s do a favor for the guy we met in book eight.
Maybe It’s Only Me Department: When I read books, I tend to mentally create images of the main characters based on celebrities, family, friends, etc. The first book was turned into a decent movie years ago with Denzel Washington as Easy and Don Cheadle as Mouse. Cheadle I can get behind, but, sorry Denzel, in my cluttered mind, Samuel L. Jackson will always be Easy.
Rawlins is a black private investigator and Mosley’s walking polemic against the virulent racism that African-Americans endured in post-World War II Los Angeles. Each Rawlins novel not only features a different color in the title (like John MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels) but takes place during a different time period. The first book, the fine Devil in a Blue Dress, occurred in the late forties; this one offers a window into the height of the mid-sixties hippie/flower power era.
Some authors of the PI genre - Robert B. Parker, Sue Grafton – who have built up a hefty ouevre, start creating a supporting cast of characters that they like to parade out at a moment’s notice and deftly sprinkle amongest the pages but in this case it’s a double-edged sword. On one hand the reader is happy to see some old, familiar faces, but here the procession has a tendency to water down the main plot threads – “here’s that genius friend from book five, what the hell happened to that interesting hippie chick?”
Outside of Easy, Mosely’s finest creation is Mouse, Rawlins’ best friend since childhood – criminal, murderer, borderline psychopath – he’s like a venomous snake coiled and ready to strike in a pinch. He’s handy to have around, but his unpredictability amps up the tension.
Mosely is a fine writer and brings some skills to the P.I. genre. His insights into Rawlins’ pain, confusion and anger at being a black man in a white-dominated society that’s spirit crushing in its prejudices, is palpable and he’s got a terrific dry wit. This book starts off like gangbusters, but gets sidetracked about two-thirds of the way through by the aforementioned cavalcade of family, friends and others – e.g. let’s do a favor for the guy we met in book eight.
Maybe It’s Only Me Department: When I read books, I tend to mentally create images of the main characters based on celebrities, family, friends, etc. The first book was turned into a decent movie years ago with Denzel Washington as Easy and Don Cheadle as Mouse. Cheadle I can get behind, but, sorry Denzel, in my cluttered mind, Samuel L. Jackson will always be Easy.
August 3, 2014
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.
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.
June 23, 2013
Hurray, Easy Rawlins is back! Mosley’s noirish series featuring this black private detective in the 50’s and early 60’s had appeared to reach the end of the line in 2007. Mosley started a lovely new series on private detective Leonid McGill set in contemporary New York City (4 at this writing). But he couldn’t keep Rawlins out of his imagination, and he resurrects him for this satisfying tale set in L.A. in 1967.
Rawlins wakes from a long coma following a car wreck, and learns that his boyhood friend and killer outlaw, Raymond (“Mouse”), has saved him and organized his care with support of his adopted kids, a teenaged girl and newly married son. As he begins to recover, he is eager to take on a case Mouse tasks him with, to locate a black teenager who went out to a music club and disappeared. Both Mouse and he have very personal motivations to help the mother find her son, which they don’t talk about for a long time.
Rawlins only feels alive when he is doing what he does best, and like a shark, he has to be moving to keep the oxygen/life flow going. As he creaks around on the streets looking for a breadcrumb trail, he is led to seek some special pick-me-up stuff from a herbalist friend. Mama Jo gives him a 12-pack of little bottles: “I call this here Gator’s Blood,” Jo said as she regained her seat. “That there is some powerful juju. …”. The energy rush this elixir gives Rawlins is a bit of a Faustian bargain because it also puts him in a state where his passions need restraining, including both aggressive and lustful ones. This is usually played for a bit of humor, as he works hard to stay on the side of civilization in the many tough spots he runs up against. He trusts Jo’s claim that the stuff is healing, and perhaps there is a bit of a magical realism element with this medicine. But I could just as easily assume the effects to be similar to the invincible feeling that a natural speed-like drug might convey.
It soon turns out that the missing young man of 18 was last seen with various people in various places under the influence of an LSD-like drug given him by a white hippie chick, the kind of drug that lasts for days (STP). His whereabouts soon become of abiding interest to both the police and some drug dealers, concerned respectively with a murder and with a lot of missing money. Along the way, Rawlins journey of detection leads him on a tour among fascinating folks of diverse social strata and positions of power, from gated communities to the squalor and glitz of the Sunset Strip area of town. The multicultural free-love outlook of hippie culture begins to grow on him, and he sees some commonality between the lifelong oppression experienced by poor blacks and the new discrimination against the hippies by the upper class, gangsters, and the police:
When the Watts Riots had ended I saw the divisions form among the nonwhite races of L.A. I’d also seen a split in our own community, where brother turned against brother and corrupt city officials stepped in to take their revenge. But in that hippie diner there was a hint of something hopeful. There were white people realizing for the first time what it was like to be shunned and segregated, fired for no reason and arrested because of the way they looked. …
To subsidize his work, Rawlins takes on another job involving a white-collar financial blackmail scheme that has an old friend, Jackson, behind the eight ball. Following his signature strategy in leveraging past or new favors for help, he finds ways to use steps on each case to help the other. A common element is his heroic tilting at the windmills of privilege and the money behind it:
Money means freedom; that was what people in the white America thought then. Citizens like me knew that whatever you had could be taken away in an instant. We knew that value was first and foremost defines by the hand that offered it. Those on the receiving end were one-legged tightrope walkers.
Mosley does a marvelous job advancing the detective as heroic navigator of the sea of social ills. I love how he provides an occasional pause for epiphany in the righteous trip Rawlins pursues with chemical help:
By then the Gator’s Blood had seeped all the way to my fingertips. I was ready for anything. Life stopped being normal and it was more like living in a movie. And then I thought about my life like it was one of those 3-D tableaus the architects make to represent their projects. I saw that there was never anything natural about my life in the first place: not my being orphaned, black, a soldier in World War II, or my life of found children and detective work that was more like a secret war where you fought on both sides at once.
I particularly loved the character of Jackson, who works in computer security for a French investment firm. Rawlins loves talking books and ideas with his friend, who grew up in the same poor neighborhood:
Jackson had the ability to set a fire in my mind. He was forever thinking, and a thinking man is always in trouble—especially if his skin color doesn’t fit into the dominant color scheme of the dominant culture.
Jackson may represent a bit of homage to Ralph Ellison’s protagonist in “The Invisible Man”, a black man who works for the power company and exacts a quiet form of revenge. In a fascinating allusion to literary heroes of Mosley himself, Jackson weighs the accomplishment of Chester Himes’ abundant set of novels over Ellison’s one masterpiece:
“Ellison made a window that the white man could look inta, but it’s Chester made a door so we had a way out the burnin’ house."
I weigh Mosley over both because I like the chance of more outstanding novels like this featuring Easy Rawlins.
Rawlins wakes from a long coma following a car wreck, and learns that his boyhood friend and killer outlaw, Raymond (“Mouse”), has saved him and organized his care with support of his adopted kids, a teenaged girl and newly married son. As he begins to recover, he is eager to take on a case Mouse tasks him with, to locate a black teenager who went out to a music club and disappeared. Both Mouse and he have very personal motivations to help the mother find her son, which they don’t talk about for a long time.
Rawlins only feels alive when he is doing what he does best, and like a shark, he has to be moving to keep the oxygen/life flow going. As he creaks around on the streets looking for a breadcrumb trail, he is led to seek some special pick-me-up stuff from a herbalist friend. Mama Jo gives him a 12-pack of little bottles: “I call this here Gator’s Blood,” Jo said as she regained her seat. “That there is some powerful juju. …”. The energy rush this elixir gives Rawlins is a bit of a Faustian bargain because it also puts him in a state where his passions need restraining, including both aggressive and lustful ones. This is usually played for a bit of humor, as he works hard to stay on the side of civilization in the many tough spots he runs up against. He trusts Jo’s claim that the stuff is healing, and perhaps there is a bit of a magical realism element with this medicine. But I could just as easily assume the effects to be similar to the invincible feeling that a natural speed-like drug might convey.
It soon turns out that the missing young man of 18 was last seen with various people in various places under the influence of an LSD-like drug given him by a white hippie chick, the kind of drug that lasts for days (STP). His whereabouts soon become of abiding interest to both the police and some drug dealers, concerned respectively with a murder and with a lot of missing money. Along the way, Rawlins journey of detection leads him on a tour among fascinating folks of diverse social strata and positions of power, from gated communities to the squalor and glitz of the Sunset Strip area of town. The multicultural free-love outlook of hippie culture begins to grow on him, and he sees some commonality between the lifelong oppression experienced by poor blacks and the new discrimination against the hippies by the upper class, gangsters, and the police:
When the Watts Riots had ended I saw the divisions form among the nonwhite races of L.A. I’d also seen a split in our own community, where brother turned against brother and corrupt city officials stepped in to take their revenge. But in that hippie diner there was a hint of something hopeful. There were white people realizing for the first time what it was like to be shunned and segregated, fired for no reason and arrested because of the way they looked. …
To subsidize his work, Rawlins takes on another job involving a white-collar financial blackmail scheme that has an old friend, Jackson, behind the eight ball. Following his signature strategy in leveraging past or new favors for help, he finds ways to use steps on each case to help the other. A common element is his heroic tilting at the windmills of privilege and the money behind it:
Money means freedom; that was what people in the white America thought then. Citizens like me knew that whatever you had could be taken away in an instant. We knew that value was first and foremost defines by the hand that offered it. Those on the receiving end were one-legged tightrope walkers.
Mosley does a marvelous job advancing the detective as heroic navigator of the sea of social ills. I love how he provides an occasional pause for epiphany in the righteous trip Rawlins pursues with chemical help:
By then the Gator’s Blood had seeped all the way to my fingertips. I was ready for anything. Life stopped being normal and it was more like living in a movie. And then I thought about my life like it was one of those 3-D tableaus the architects make to represent their projects. I saw that there was never anything natural about my life in the first place: not my being orphaned, black, a soldier in World War II, or my life of found children and detective work that was more like a secret war where you fought on both sides at once.
I particularly loved the character of Jackson, who works in computer security for a French investment firm. Rawlins loves talking books and ideas with his friend, who grew up in the same poor neighborhood:
Jackson had the ability to set a fire in my mind. He was forever thinking, and a thinking man is always in trouble—especially if his skin color doesn’t fit into the dominant color scheme of the dominant culture.
Jackson may represent a bit of homage to Ralph Ellison’s protagonist in “The Invisible Man”, a black man who works for the power company and exacts a quiet form of revenge. In a fascinating allusion to literary heroes of Mosley himself, Jackson weighs the accomplishment of Chester Himes’ abundant set of novels over Ellison’s one masterpiece:
“Ellison made a window that the white man could look inta, but it’s Chester made a door so we had a way out the burnin’ house."
I weigh Mosley over both because I like the chance of more outstanding novels like this featuring Easy Rawlins.
May 29, 2018
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!
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!
March 1, 2020
Many different characters...many telling descriptors... a crazy turn of events!
This is book 12 of the Easy Rawlins Mystery series. In this book, Easy almost died after his car plunges over a cliff. Was it an accident? Was it a suicide attempt? Did someone try to kill him? He began to experience an out-of-body experience as he recalls the in-and-out accounts of the muddled memories of his accident through his recovery process.
His friend Mouse has him back cruising the mean streets of L.A. in no time, to look for a young black man named Evander "Little Green" Noon, who disappeared during an acid trip. Fueled by an elixir called Gator's Blood, brewed by the conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual, and emotional resurrection.
During Easy's investigation of the missing kid, Evander, he meets a girl named Coco who led Easy to a commune where Evander who had a bad trip on some acid and was held captive, tortured, tied to a tree as a prisoner. Easy set a diversion to rescue Evander who was still trippin' from the drugs. When Evander slowly started coherently talking, Easy felt there was something pretty shady between Evander's mother and Mouse, which made Easy believe that there was something more to this story than a missing kid who was on an acid trip.
Money, murder, and mayhem soon began to give way to this investigation. Some dangerous people were trying to find Evander because they believed he stole a stash of money from them. Of course, when Easy questioned Little Green about it, he couldn't remember anything. After Easy and Evander finally figured out where the money was hidden, Easy went to see a Frenchman named Jean-Paul to stash the money and keep it safe for him for a while. Evander was curious about whether Mouse killed his father Frank Green and asked Easy about it, which Easy denied. Easy later advised Mouse to do the same.
Feather, Easy's daughter asked Easy about her mother and he promised to talk to her about it. There are many unanswered mysteries that I suppose will continue into the next book of Easy Rawlins mysteries.
This is book 12 of the Easy Rawlins Mystery series. In this book, Easy almost died after his car plunges over a cliff. Was it an accident? Was it a suicide attempt? Did someone try to kill him? He began to experience an out-of-body experience as he recalls the in-and-out accounts of the muddled memories of his accident through his recovery process.
His friend Mouse has him back cruising the mean streets of L.A. in no time, to look for a young black man named Evander "Little Green" Noon, who disappeared during an acid trip. Fueled by an elixir called Gator's Blood, brewed by the conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual, and emotional resurrection.
During Easy's investigation of the missing kid, Evander, he meets a girl named Coco who led Easy to a commune where Evander who had a bad trip on some acid and was held captive, tortured, tied to a tree as a prisoner. Easy set a diversion to rescue Evander who was still trippin' from the drugs. When Evander slowly started coherently talking, Easy felt there was something pretty shady between Evander's mother and Mouse, which made Easy believe that there was something more to this story than a missing kid who was on an acid trip.
Money, murder, and mayhem soon began to give way to this investigation. Some dangerous people were trying to find Evander because they believed he stole a stash of money from them. Of course, when Easy questioned Little Green about it, he couldn't remember anything. After Easy and Evander finally figured out where the money was hidden, Easy went to see a Frenchman named Jean-Paul to stash the money and keep it safe for him for a while. Evander was curious about whether Mouse killed his father Frank Green and asked Easy about it, which Easy denied. Easy later advised Mouse to do the same.
Feather, Easy's daughter asked Easy about her mother and he promised to talk to her about it. There are many unanswered mysteries that I suppose will continue into the next book of Easy Rawlins mysteries.
April 9, 2013
Not even death comes easy for Easy Rawlins, a black private eye in 1960's California. It's been three months since his car went over a cliff and he was presumed dead. (Blonde Faith: An Easy Rawlins Novel) If it wasn't for the determination of his friend, Mouse, Easy would have died. Mouse was more likely to be cause of men dying than their being saved, but he would not give up on Easy. Mouse scoured the cliff side looking for his friend. He finally found Easy's near lifeless body and carried Easy up the cliff to safety. After three months in a coma with some doctoring and constant home nursing care, Easy is coming back from the edge. The one thing that can surely pump the life back into Easy's ravaged body, is a plea for help from Mouse. Walter Mosley's writing reminds me of another author's easy going style that is yet so revealing of the human condition. Mark Twain and Mosley both tell us so much about ourselves as they spin their yarns. We are easily drawn into their world, leaving us nodding our heads in acknowledgement that once again we have been shown who we truly are. Book provided for review by Amazon Vine and Doubleday.
January 6, 2016
Easy Rawlins has been resurrected from the dead and comes fully back to life through the pages of this murder/mystery. Welcome back, Easy!
April 23, 2013
Wow! It is so great to have another Easy Rawlins mystery in my hands. I never thought I'd see him again. I don't think there's another character as good, as decent, as fully and vividly imagined as Easy Rawlins in all of American crime fiction and his apparent death at the end of the previous novel was a crime in itself. As this book opens, Easy is just coming out of a near-death coma and feeling pretty horrible. He's feeling all the aches and pains of his 47 years and of the car crash that nearly ended his life. But he can't just sit around and be waited on while he convalesces--no, he's got to get back out there on the streets of Los Angeles, to help find a missing boy named Evander Green, the "Little Green" of the title. Easy's got to be busy and as he goes about his task, we get to follow along with him while he checks back in with nearly all of his memorable characters and friends from previous novels: Jackson Blue, Primo, Mofass, his children, Feather and Jesus and their extended families, as well as Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, Easy's best friend since childhood, and the man who brought Easy in on the search for Levander. The mystery is as convoluted as any in Mosley's canon, but the real pleasure is just following these characters as they wander around town and interact with each other, and with the hippies and counterculture of the late 1960s in Los Angeles. Here's to many more Easy Rawlins mysteries...**ARC provided by NetGalley**
May 24, 2013
Walter Mosley is as good as he has always been. The man knows how to craft a mystery. If you aren't a fan, you certainly should be. A Walter Mosley mystery is going to be interesting and move swiftly. The good thing about the Easy Rawlins' books are the independence of each of them. You don't have to start with any particular book, they all stand alone greatly. Mosley does a great job with keeping the characters familiar, by use of refreshing passages throughout the book. He also has a penchant for political commentary that not only sums up the time period that he writes in, but showcases his thoughts on race, class and other American issues.
"We-almost every black man, woman, and child in America-inherited anxieties like others received red hair or blue eyes." Sentences like this, lend to the authentic feel of the characters and the lives they are living. The plot has already been well described in other reviews, so I'll just say you can never go wrong with an Easy Rawlins mystery.
"We-almost every black man, woman, and child in America-inherited anxieties like others received red hair or blue eyes." Sentences like this, lend to the authentic feel of the characters and the lives they are living. The plot has already been well described in other reviews, so I'll just say you can never go wrong with an Easy Rawlins mystery.
March 16, 2024
Easy Rawlins, for those who don't know, is a Black private detective in LA, here in 1967, immediately post riots and at the dawn of anti-war hippie culture. White police still oppress Black men but Easy has friends in every part of society, including the cops. Easy is hired to find a missing young man, the son of a friend of Mouse, Easy's go assistant for murder and violence. The boy, transitioning to manhood, has become mixed in a intra-gang fight and Easy meets, threatens, fools, or befriends a fantastic range of colorful characters on his way to sorting out the problem. The strength of Mosley's writing is his description of people, places, and cultures along with his nuanced portrayal of racial tension. What weakened this book (and others I've read) is the tsunami of characters. Layers of criminals, shady characters, cops, and others make it difficult to keep track and impossible to remember or understand who did what to whom. Well, it all works out in the end, another weak aspect to Mosley's writing, as anytime Easy needs a nuclear engineer who speaks Russian, Mosley invents the perfect person, connects him to Easy in two steps, and fixes the problem. It makes Easy the most effective detective ever, but it strains credulity.
March 1, 2019
Easy never lets me down.
Where you can find me:
•(♥).•*Monlatable Book Reviews*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @MonlatReader
Instagram: @readermonica
Facebook: Monica Reeds
Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase
Where you can find me:
•(♥).•*Monlatable Book Reviews*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @MonlatReader
Instagram: @readermonica
Facebook: Monica Reeds
Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase
May 27, 2013
Easy Rawlings is back after surviving what would have been a fatal accident for most men in the last book in the series, Blonde Faith. It's 1967 in Watts, Los Angeles. For someone who not have read previous books in the series - and I haven't read them all - it can be hard to understand the character. He is a WWII veteran who is a private detective at a time when there weren't many black private detectives. He is a violent man in a violent world and a loving man in a loving world. Moseley's works are always about racism and how it affects everyone no matter who they are. They are dark, often filled with a bit of Caribbean voodoo. In this case, it's Mama Jo who mixes a magic elixir that allows Easy to leave his sick bed prematurely. Thanks to his friend, Mouse, Easy was rescued from death after his car plunged down a cliff. Now he's awake from a long coma, and Mouse needs his help. Everyone agrees he needs to rest, but Mouse needs him. A young man runs off with a bag of drug money during an LSD haze. Now the people want their money back and will do whatever it takes. We meet the many people who know and respect Easy and are willing to help him get the job done - from Mama Jo and her potions to the CEO of a French firm. I love Moseley's writing. Reviewers have picked apart his last few books. Perhaps it's just that he's from a different generation. I know that I'll be reading his stuff for as long as he's willing to write it.
January 15, 2022
Book 12
This was not my best read in the Easy Rawlins series, but Walter Mosley is still by far one of my favorite authors.
Easy Rawlins and Mouse are just 2 men you want on your side in the world of crime, you just do. They are both cool, witty, smart, charming and not afraid to take a criminal out. Easy has IT, whatever it is and I love reading about all of it!!
The audio was a little long and slow at times, but hey I would listen to it all over again. There is always a lesson to learn from Easy Breezy🤩
This was not my best read in the Easy Rawlins series, but Walter Mosley is still by far one of my favorite authors.
Easy Rawlins and Mouse are just 2 men you want on your side in the world of crime, you just do. They are both cool, witty, smart, charming and not afraid to take a criminal out. Easy has IT, whatever it is and I love reading about all of it!!
The audio was a little long and slow at times, but hey I would listen to it all over again. There is always a lesson to learn from Easy Breezy🤩
July 5, 2013
A disappointment, though an honorable one. I love Walter Mosley as a human being, as a political writer, as a cultural force. How many other crime novelists are trying to, say, disprove the Moynihan Report in their series? But aside from the usual convoluted plot resolution, this book doesn't feel in any way like 1967. I'm sorry, it just doesn't. There are the usual set pieces where Easy Rawlins has run-ins with racist cops and authority figures, and this time The People stand up for him, so we get the usual changing-times registry that Mosley likes to run through. But the novel uses the 60s milieu only for set decoration (unlike the much better job he did evoking early Black Power in Bad Boy Brawly Brown); if you want something that really captures what (I imagine) it felt like at the time, the last Pynchon novel, or Ross Macdonald's Zebra-Striped Hearse much more forcefully impress on you that peculiar lostness/vision of late-60s youth culture. Which isn't to say that I won't read his 1971 novel when it comes out.
August 6, 2020
ETA: i have been reading a lot of walter mosley lately but i think this is the one in which easy, a middle-aged man, has a very young woman blissfully give him a hand job in a commune while he is high. and that is skeezy as fuck. so let me dock a couple stars.
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when these novels start i tell myself, this time i will follow everything. then, regularly, the last bit loses me and i follow blind.
it seems absurd to give walter mosley less than 5 stars. it's walter mosley. but one feels one should be discriminating, so one docks a star, for no reason at a
--------------------------
when these novels start i tell myself, this time i will follow everything. then, regularly, the last bit loses me and i follow blind.
it seems absurd to give walter mosley less than 5 stars. it's walter mosley. but one feels one should be discriminating, so one docks a star, for no reason at a
September 8, 2016
Good to have Easy Rawlins back again. Great story.
September 30, 2016
Although I read the first book in this series, Devil in a Blue Dress, a few years ago, I have read none of the others. This one, Little Green, is the series’ twelfth book. The first book takes place not long after World War 2. Easy’s an African-American combat veteran from Louisiana who relocates to L.A.. His expectations are basic, but life is not easy, despite his name. Besides providing the entertainment of a mystery novel, that’s Mr. Mosley’s point. Little Green takes place in 1967. Easy has people in his life, including a daughter. Times are changing and Easy’s older, but racism and race relations in America are a huge part of the setting and a major element of Easy’s narration. Hippies and free love populate parts of the story but L.A. is not a paradise, though Easy seems to feel at times that things are getting better.
The story begins slowly because Easy is recovering from events at the end of the previous book in the series, Blonde Faith. I was fine with this. Considering how many novels I missed in between, landing back into Easy's head and world was smooth and enjoyable. Good thing, because I was counting on that. Look elsewhere if you want to know more about the story, though I admit I love the way Mosley’s story is not one thread, not one nail driven home, but an avalanche of interconnected plot lines that appear/reappear suddenly like unexpected boulders.
I confess. I was reading as a writer. I’m trying to figure out an elusive element of writing called voice. I’ll share some of the definitions I’ve seen for voice and some examples I think I found. If you disagree, let me know.
Easy Rawlins is a great character. How did he get on the page?
Mary Kole, in Writing Irresistible KidLit: The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Fiction for Young Adult and Middle Grade Readers, describes voice at one point (p. 78) “...as a hint of his language, energy, and way of noticing things around him”. In Little Green, we get to know Easy by the distinctive way he notices things around him. I might have noticed this manifestation of voice more than any other. Here are just a few:
“Villard was a man who studied other men.” (p. 174)
“She grinned and was maybe trying to look sexy.” (p. 260)
“Suggs had become subverbal, shaking his head and looking like he just licked a lemon.” (p. 258)
Energy came up a lot too. Easy begins the novel coming out of a coma and requires most of it to get back to normal:
“He was shorter than Ruby and rail thin, but I was still weak and found myself losing the tug-of-war with a ruddy little white guy with shoulder-length black hair and a beard.” (p. 99)
Once in awhile I came across language use that seemed to reveal a lot about Easy:
“It is not for us to question them like Nazis.”
This last word told a whole story. There was a generation of French men and women who understood, however briefly, what it was to be treated like a dog in your own home.” (p. 167)
“That day a young man with almost alabaster white skin, coarse red hair, and pale blue eyes was my corporate magistrate.” (p. 163)
Another definition of voice I’ve come across in my attempts to revise my own writing was in Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore by Elizabeth Lyon. Among other things, she cites attitude and passion as components of this difficult-to-pin-down trait of writing called voice. Easy has lots of attitude, which Lyon defines further as opinions, viewpoints, mind-sets, biases, and prejudices. Mosley brings Easy to life with a lot of it:
(opinions) “That’s what the Watts Riots did for L.A. For the first time West Coast Caucasians were frightened of almost any black face that loomed before them.” (p. 74)
(viewpoints) “I was just another soul passing through, making believe that the illusion of my life had substance.” (p. 75)
(mind-sets) “Chuckling at my own reckless nature made the netting wobble more, but I couldn’t stop laughing.” (p. 108)
(biases) “I was a man again, on the job again, back in the world where nothing ever turned out right but it kept right on turning anyway.” (p. 265)
(prejudices) “This reminded me of the gestural disdain cultivated by churchgoers I’d known.” (p. 210)
I found fewer instances of passion. That makes sense, because of Easy’s state of mind, but explaining that might be a spoiler so I won’t. There were instances of passion though:
(desires) “He backed away and I had to concentrate not to advance on him.” (p. 76)
(keen interests) “I watched her running on those young haunches, thinking that I was alive again but not exactly the same man.” (p. 255)
(needs) “I actually wanted to beat that boy just because that’s what he expected.” (p. 76)
(yearnings) “He was right about the eggs. They reminded me of the ones I ate when I was a child in Louisiana and my mother’s smile met me every morning at the breakfast table.” (p. 101)
(obsessions) “I really enjoyed the soul food repast: pig tails, dirty rice, and collard greens cooked with ham hocks and finished with white vinegar.” (p. 71)
Bored yet? One last list. Mary Kole returned to voice on p. 219 of Writing Irresistible KidLit: The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Fiction for Young Adult and Middle Grade Readers and broke it down into word choice, imagery, syntax, rhythm, mood and simplicity. I did not pursue this version of voice with as much care as the above, but found a few things...
(word choice) “Was he with a nigger?” Sunglass Man asked. “No,” I said. “The cracker was alone.” (p. 250)
(imagery) “There was a part of my mind that said this might not be true, that I might be found innocent by a jury of my peers.
This optimism made me laugh; it brought out the rough guffaws of all my dead ancestors back to the slave ships.” (p. 286)
(syntax) “There were two of him, tall and in gray uniforms, hatless but armed.” (p. 166)
(rhythm) “I asked with only a hint of the exasperation I felt.” (p. 169)
(mood) “I glanced over at the table he’d come from. I wanted to see if the men were smiling or in any other way anticipatory. They were not, which was a relief. I moved my hand away from the pistol in my belt.” (p. 114)
(simplicity) “I know that. I know it.” (p. 272)
The story begins slowly because Easy is recovering from events at the end of the previous book in the series, Blonde Faith. I was fine with this. Considering how many novels I missed in between, landing back into Easy's head and world was smooth and enjoyable. Good thing, because I was counting on that. Look elsewhere if you want to know more about the story, though I admit I love the way Mosley’s story is not one thread, not one nail driven home, but an avalanche of interconnected plot lines that appear/reappear suddenly like unexpected boulders.
I confess. I was reading as a writer. I’m trying to figure out an elusive element of writing called voice. I’ll share some of the definitions I’ve seen for voice and some examples I think I found. If you disagree, let me know.
Easy Rawlins is a great character. How did he get on the page?
Mary Kole, in Writing Irresistible KidLit: The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Fiction for Young Adult and Middle Grade Readers, describes voice at one point (p. 78) “...as a hint of his language, energy, and way of noticing things around him”. In Little Green, we get to know Easy by the distinctive way he notices things around him. I might have noticed this manifestation of voice more than any other. Here are just a few:
“Villard was a man who studied other men.” (p. 174)
“She grinned and was maybe trying to look sexy.” (p. 260)
“Suggs had become subverbal, shaking his head and looking like he just licked a lemon.” (p. 258)
Energy came up a lot too. Easy begins the novel coming out of a coma and requires most of it to get back to normal:
“He was shorter than Ruby and rail thin, but I was still weak and found myself losing the tug-of-war with a ruddy little white guy with shoulder-length black hair and a beard.” (p. 99)
Once in awhile I came across language use that seemed to reveal a lot about Easy:
“It is not for us to question them like Nazis.”
This last word told a whole story. There was a generation of French men and women who understood, however briefly, what it was to be treated like a dog in your own home.” (p. 167)
“That day a young man with almost alabaster white skin, coarse red hair, and pale blue eyes was my corporate magistrate.” (p. 163)
Another definition of voice I’ve come across in my attempts to revise my own writing was in Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore by Elizabeth Lyon. Among other things, she cites attitude and passion as components of this difficult-to-pin-down trait of writing called voice. Easy has lots of attitude, which Lyon defines further as opinions, viewpoints, mind-sets, biases, and prejudices. Mosley brings Easy to life with a lot of it:
(opinions) “That’s what the Watts Riots did for L.A. For the first time West Coast Caucasians were frightened of almost any black face that loomed before them.” (p. 74)
(viewpoints) “I was just another soul passing through, making believe that the illusion of my life had substance.” (p. 75)
(mind-sets) “Chuckling at my own reckless nature made the netting wobble more, but I couldn’t stop laughing.” (p. 108)
(biases) “I was a man again, on the job again, back in the world where nothing ever turned out right but it kept right on turning anyway.” (p. 265)
(prejudices) “This reminded me of the gestural disdain cultivated by churchgoers I’d known.” (p. 210)
I found fewer instances of passion. That makes sense, because of Easy’s state of mind, but explaining that might be a spoiler so I won’t. There were instances of passion though:
(desires) “He backed away and I had to concentrate not to advance on him.” (p. 76)
(keen interests) “I watched her running on those young haunches, thinking that I was alive again but not exactly the same man.” (p. 255)
(needs) “I actually wanted to beat that boy just because that’s what he expected.” (p. 76)
(yearnings) “He was right about the eggs. They reminded me of the ones I ate when I was a child in Louisiana and my mother’s smile met me every morning at the breakfast table.” (p. 101)
(obsessions) “I really enjoyed the soul food repast: pig tails, dirty rice, and collard greens cooked with ham hocks and finished with white vinegar.” (p. 71)
Bored yet? One last list. Mary Kole returned to voice on p. 219 of Writing Irresistible KidLit: The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Fiction for Young Adult and Middle Grade Readers and broke it down into word choice, imagery, syntax, rhythm, mood and simplicity. I did not pursue this version of voice with as much care as the above, but found a few things...
(word choice) “Was he with a nigger?” Sunglass Man asked. “No,” I said. “The cracker was alone.” (p. 250)
(imagery) “There was a part of my mind that said this might not be true, that I might be found innocent by a jury of my peers.
This optimism made me laugh; it brought out the rough guffaws of all my dead ancestors back to the slave ships.” (p. 286)
(syntax) “There were two of him, tall and in gray uniforms, hatless but armed.” (p. 166)
(rhythm) “I asked with only a hint of the exasperation I felt.” (p. 169)
(mood) “I glanced over at the table he’d come from. I wanted to see if the men were smiling or in any other way anticipatory. They were not, which was a relief. I moved my hand away from the pistol in my belt.” (p. 114)
(simplicity) “I know that. I know it.” (p. 272)
September 9, 2021
Hace unos días conseguí leer el libro que la edición española se saltó en su día (Siete casos) de la saga de Easy Rawlins. Por un lado fue una satisfacción recuperar las aventuras del bueno de Easy, pero por otro lado me dejó la duda de qué había sido de él, toda vez que el libro se publicó originalmente a principios de los 2000 y Walter Mosley ha seguido sacando libros de sus aventuras hasta nuestros días.
Unos cuantos más se publicaron en castellano y el resto se quedó en el limbo de las benditas editoriales españolas, guiadas siempre por criterios que sólo ellas entienden.
El primero que ya no llegó a ser traducido fue este, Little Green, y no pude evitar la tentación de averiguar cómo seguía Easy. Así que armado con mi precario inglés y la inestimable ayuda de los diccionarios, me dispuse a averiguarlo.
Y me llevé una agradable sorpresa. El Easy que yo dejé estaba de bajón, y parecía que ni él ni Mosley estaban muy dispuestos a seguir la saga. Pero en Little Green Easy se enfrenta a una suerte de renacimiento, a una vuelta a la vida que parece que le insufla nuevos ánimos.
El caso es bastante clásico en la saga, un joven negro ha desaparecido sin dejar rastro y Easy es el único capaz de encontrarlo, aunque esté apenas restablecido de su casi muerte. Y bregando con su propia recuperación y la peligrosa amistad de Mouse, se sumerge en el convulso Los Angeles de principio de los sesenta, donde el habitual racismo de la sociedad blanca colisiona con la revolución contracultural hippie de la época, creando un escenario casi más interesante que el caso en si.
Lo más destacable, si me permiten la frivolidad, es el vestuario de los personajes, una explosión de colores que hace que los gansters más peligrosos se paseen con trajes rosas o verdes chillones y corbatas azules eléctricas, demostración de que no siempre cualquier época pasada fue mejor. Al menos en lo que a la moda se refiere, claro.
Así que me ha gustado mi reencuentro con Easy y su mundo, y probablemente vuelva a caer en sus redes en algún momento.
Unos cuantos más se publicaron en castellano y el resto se quedó en el limbo de las benditas editoriales españolas, guiadas siempre por criterios que sólo ellas entienden.
El primero que ya no llegó a ser traducido fue este, Little Green, y no pude evitar la tentación de averiguar cómo seguía Easy. Así que armado con mi precario inglés y la inestimable ayuda de los diccionarios, me dispuse a averiguarlo.
Y me llevé una agradable sorpresa. El Easy que yo dejé estaba de bajón, y parecía que ni él ni Mosley estaban muy dispuestos a seguir la saga. Pero en Little Green Easy se enfrenta a una suerte de renacimiento, a una vuelta a la vida que parece que le insufla nuevos ánimos.
El caso es bastante clásico en la saga, un joven negro ha desaparecido sin dejar rastro y Easy es el único capaz de encontrarlo, aunque esté apenas restablecido de su casi muerte. Y bregando con su propia recuperación y la peligrosa amistad de Mouse, se sumerge en el convulso Los Angeles de principio de los sesenta, donde el habitual racismo de la sociedad blanca colisiona con la revolución contracultural hippie de la época, creando un escenario casi más interesante que el caso en si.
Lo más destacable, si me permiten la frivolidad, es el vestuario de los personajes, una explosión de colores que hace que los gansters más peligrosos se paseen con trajes rosas o verdes chillones y corbatas azules eléctricas, demostración de que no siempre cualquier época pasada fue mejor. Al menos en lo que a la moda se refiere, claro.
Así que me ha gustado mi reencuentro con Easy y su mundo, y probablemente vuelva a caer en sus redes en algún momento.
June 18, 2020
It's really between a 3.5 star rating and a 4 because I liked much of the book. I haven't read an Easy Rawlins novel since White Butterfly, many years ago, so I'm missing out on a lot of things between that novel and this one. I was intrigued by the setting: late 60's and the Sunset Strip. The mystery of what how a young African American man disappears from a night out on the Strip with a "white hippie girl" also intrigued me. I wanted to find out what happened. I wanted to step into another time and see it through another man's eyes. So on that level it succeeds. I was less interested in the family angles but they are integral to the story. I wanted more of the mystery and Easy's search for answers. I need to go back to the novels and years between White Butterfly and this one to get a better appreciation of this later book in the series.
June 20, 2017
This was an audio read for me and were it not I would have gone through a pack of yellow pens highlighting my favorite passages, which probably amounted to the entire book. Little Green is an Easy Rawlins mystery by Walter Mosley. Mosley's writing is beyond beautiful. Every word is perfect and the mystery here is why I haven't read more of his books. This is actually something I wonder every time I read one. I believe he is one of our greatest writers and this was a perfect example of why. It is a mystery, it is a window into another time, it is a slice of urban history and it is a novel. It succeeds on every front. I was entranced and sat in my driveway on more than one occasion so I could finish a chapter. There are sentences still echoing in my head.
The audio narration by Michael Boatman could not have been better. Each character had their own voice but it wasn't done in a heavy handed manner. I cannot recommend this book enough.
June 14, 2013
I did not realize how much I missed Easy Rawlins and his motley crew until I started reading the spellbinding first page of this well-plotted novel of gritty action and emotional fallout of secrets and bad decisions. The book opens with Easy waking from a coma caused by a bad accident in a dream-like state physically weak but knowing that he needs to keep moving forward if he is to survive. Mosley’s skill with characterization shines through as whom else but Raymond “Mouse” Alexander would be the one to not only find Easy but to ease him back into the living world – their connection to each other is soul-deep and profound. As Easy ventures out to find a young black man, Evander “Little Green” Noon who has last seen in the “hippie” section of L.A., the story twists and turns to reveal there is much more than what meets the eye. With a strong supporting cast with the likes of Mama Jo, Jackson Blue, Feather and Jesus, the story is told in the moment with flashbacks which resurrects old ghosts and stirs up old memories, as the changing times of 1967 brings new hope for harmony, yet often enough the ugly truths show that often justice is behind the times. The trademark dry humor, the keen understanding of 1967 L.A., the charismatic characters makes this an entertaining novel with heart and chutzpah. This is a great series that leaves the reader desperate for the next book.
December 11, 2015
Ross MacDonald when asked about his Lew Archer novels said he basically rewrote the same story eighteen times. Well OK, but it was a hell of story, worth the retelling.
Walter Mosley has written thirteen Easy Rawlins mysteries, three Fearless Jones mysteries, five Leonard McGill mysteries and three Socrates Fortlow mysteries. (disclaimer - That is to the best of my and Wikipedia's knowledge as of today.) And, I swear these stories have gotten a kinda familiar ring to them. So about half way through with this one I was struggling. Easy/Walter had reminded me for lke the two thousandth time, of the injustices of being black in America and by now he had made love to about his five hundredth woman and don't even get me started on the number of beatings, stabbings, shootings and car wreaks this poor guy has endured. And, did I mention the number of missing people he found?
But then Easy teamed up with Mouse and started to talkin' bout Angel and Feather and Bonnie and the few of his buddies that were still alive and rememberin' the ones that had died and before I knew it, I got caught up in the whole damn mess ...again.
So.., by the end, I had to admit, just like Ross, this guy retells a pretty damn good story,
Walter Mosley has written thirteen Easy Rawlins mysteries, three Fearless Jones mysteries, five Leonard McGill mysteries and three Socrates Fortlow mysteries. (disclaimer - That is to the best of my and Wikipedia's knowledge as of today.) And, I swear these stories have gotten a kinda familiar ring to them. So about half way through with this one I was struggling. Easy/Walter had reminded me for lke the two thousandth time, of the injustices of being black in America and by now he had made love to about his five hundredth woman and don't even get me started on the number of beatings, stabbings, shootings and car wreaks this poor guy has endured. And, did I mention the number of missing people he found?
But then Easy teamed up with Mouse and started to talkin' bout Angel and Feather and Bonnie and the few of his buddies that were still alive and rememberin' the ones that had died and before I knew it, I got caught up in the whole damn mess ...again.
So.., by the end, I had to admit, just like Ross, this guy retells a pretty damn good story,
November 3, 2013
Easy has risen from the dead. Last time we saw him he was going off a cliff into the ocean and it appeared the series was over. He was declared dead since the police couldn't find a body. Mouse found his body hidden on a shelf in a cliff, brings him home, and he's nursed back to while being in a coma. No sooner does he wake up than Mouse asks him for a favor. What are friends for? Easy is not too steady on his feet and is still weak in body but not spirit, however with some homeopathic gator blood from friends he proceeds to find a missing teenage boy. This hunt leads him all over LA dealing with hippies, gangsters, and some past acquaintances surprised to see him alive. What I love about this series is not so much the plots but the social commentary and the interactions Easy has with his family and just folks on the street he meets at random. I got lost in the plot at one point with several characters in some sort of conspiracy to find the missing boy. Naturally money is involved as well as drugs. Easy is a righteous man. He's a good man, but you don't want to get in his way or mess with him when he's on a mission.
May 13, 2013
When he went over a cliff in Blonde Faith, most readers thought they'd never seen Easy Rawlins again. It's been quite awhile since we last heard about Easy, so our fears were founded. Never fear, six years later, Mosley has brought Easy back to his legion of fans and he's better than ever.
While we may have thought Easy was a goner, his best friend, the quick-tempered and quick thinking Mouse, knew Easy was still alive. And thanks to the wisdom of Mama Jo, he knew just where to find him. (Speaking of Mouse, Don Cheadle played the role so well in Devil in a Blue Dress, that I forgot Mouse was supposed to be a "light-skinned and light-eyed" man.) And now that Easy is somewhat recovered, Mouse has his next case lined up.
Evander "Little Green" Noon has gone missing. Neither his name nor his family is familiar to Easy, but Mouse is all het up about finding this manchild, so Easy gets up from his sick bed to do just that. In a side of Los Angeles that we've not seen in previous Easy Rawlins' books, Walter Mosley introduces readers to the hippie culture on the Sunset Strip. Along with the hippies comes the world of acid droppers and drug dealers, parts of the ever evolving 1960s. It's a city and culture that Easy doesn't recognize, but brings him to the realization that the world he knows is changing much faster than he thought and he needs to change to keep up with it.
As in past Rawlins' stories, Mosley's black characters are almost always part of the Great Migration. Most of us know that southern blacks migrated to places like Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis in search of factory jobs between 1910 and 1970, a great number of them migrated to California, with most coming from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. As large and sprawling as Los Angeles is, these migrants stayed connected, creating their own unique communities. Mosley plays upon this and reminds us of it it when Mouse and Easy call upon friends like Mama Jo from Louisiana or Martin Martins from Mississippi to assist them in finding the son of another migrant.
I remember being upset with Walter Mosley when I read Blonde Faith, essentially killing off Easy. I've read his other books in the meantime, but I've never been as fascinated with characters like Leonid McGill. And if there was one character other than Easy that I've always wanted him to bring back, it's Socrates Fortlow from Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. Though I understood that as an author he might have been bored with the Rawlins character and wanted to work on other characters and pursue other things, I felt like there was still life left in the series. Apparently Mosley has decided there is too and has already written a follow up to Little Green called Rose Gold. I'm already anticipating Easy's next adventure.
While we may have thought Easy was a goner, his best friend, the quick-tempered and quick thinking Mouse, knew Easy was still alive. And thanks to the wisdom of Mama Jo, he knew just where to find him. (Speaking of Mouse, Don Cheadle played the role so well in Devil in a Blue Dress, that I forgot Mouse was supposed to be a "light-skinned and light-eyed" man.) And now that Easy is somewhat recovered, Mouse has his next case lined up.
Evander "Little Green" Noon has gone missing. Neither his name nor his family is familiar to Easy, but Mouse is all het up about finding this manchild, so Easy gets up from his sick bed to do just that. In a side of Los Angeles that we've not seen in previous Easy Rawlins' books, Walter Mosley introduces readers to the hippie culture on the Sunset Strip. Along with the hippies comes the world of acid droppers and drug dealers, parts of the ever evolving 1960s. It's a city and culture that Easy doesn't recognize, but brings him to the realization that the world he knows is changing much faster than he thought and he needs to change to keep up with it.
As in past Rawlins' stories, Mosley's black characters are almost always part of the Great Migration. Most of us know that southern blacks migrated to places like Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis in search of factory jobs between 1910 and 1970, a great number of them migrated to California, with most coming from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. As large and sprawling as Los Angeles is, these migrants stayed connected, creating their own unique communities. Mosley plays upon this and reminds us of it it when Mouse and Easy call upon friends like Mama Jo from Louisiana or Martin Martins from Mississippi to assist them in finding the son of another migrant.
I remember being upset with Walter Mosley when I read Blonde Faith, essentially killing off Easy. I've read his other books in the meantime, but I've never been as fascinated with characters like Leonid McGill. And if there was one character other than Easy that I've always wanted him to bring back, it's Socrates Fortlow from Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. Though I understood that as an author he might have been bored with the Rawlins character and wanted to work on other characters and pursue other things, I felt like there was still life left in the series. Apparently Mosley has decided there is too and has already written a follow up to Little Green called Rose Gold. I'm already anticipating Easy's next adventure.
June 16, 2013
Gator’s Blood
“Little Green” by Walter Mosley is the 12th installment in the Easy Rawlins Mysteries. This was the first time I ever read a Walter Mosley novel, so in the beginning of this novel I soon discovered that there must have been quite a cliffhanger from the previous novel, “Blonde Faith.” Nevertheless, I was able to understand what had happened in the previous novel - that Easy was left for dead after running his car off of a cliff.
Easy is soon found fighting for his life and is in a coma for quite some time. When Easy awakens he finds himself surrounded by family and friends. Although in a lot of pain, he realizes that his life was spared. The questions he asks himself are: why and for what reason? Mouse, his best friend and dangerous sidekick, makes a request of Easy to look into the disappearance of a young black man, Evander ‘Little Green’ Noon. Easy cannot understand what is so important that Mouse would come to him to look into the disappearance, but soon realizes that Mouse has secrets of his own and that Evander’s mother cannot stand Mouse for some inexplicable reason. The question is why? Rising from his bed shortly after coming out of the coma Easy searches the streets of the last known place that Evander was seen, downtown in L.A. where the hippies reside. Easy is about to discover that not only is he searching for Evander but others are too. Why? Will he find him before the ones out to harm him do?
“Little Green” by Walter Mosley is a very good read. I cannot believe that I have never read anything of his prior to this. After reading the 12th installment in this series I plan to go back and read the series from the very beginning. I have questions about some of his family and other characters. I would like to see how they came to be part of Rawlins’ adopted family. The overall story is interesting because it is a mystery that is set during 1967. Mr. Mosley does a great job in his descriptive narrative of what the streets looked like and the characters during this time frame. It is a very good story and I look forward to picking up more books by Mr. Mosley in the near future.
Reviewed by: Leona
“Little Green” by Walter Mosley is the 12th installment in the Easy Rawlins Mysteries. This was the first time I ever read a Walter Mosley novel, so in the beginning of this novel I soon discovered that there must have been quite a cliffhanger from the previous novel, “Blonde Faith.” Nevertheless, I was able to understand what had happened in the previous novel - that Easy was left for dead after running his car off of a cliff.
Easy is soon found fighting for his life and is in a coma for quite some time. When Easy awakens he finds himself surrounded by family and friends. Although in a lot of pain, he realizes that his life was spared. The questions he asks himself are: why and for what reason? Mouse, his best friend and dangerous sidekick, makes a request of Easy to look into the disappearance of a young black man, Evander ‘Little Green’ Noon. Easy cannot understand what is so important that Mouse would come to him to look into the disappearance, but soon realizes that Mouse has secrets of his own and that Evander’s mother cannot stand Mouse for some inexplicable reason. The question is why? Rising from his bed shortly after coming out of the coma Easy searches the streets of the last known place that Evander was seen, downtown in L.A. where the hippies reside. Easy is about to discover that not only is he searching for Evander but others are too. Why? Will he find him before the ones out to harm him do?
“Little Green” by Walter Mosley is a very good read. I cannot believe that I have never read anything of his prior to this. After reading the 12th installment in this series I plan to go back and read the series from the very beginning. I have questions about some of his family and other characters. I would like to see how they came to be part of Rawlins’ adopted family. The overall story is interesting because it is a mystery that is set during 1967. Mr. Mosley does a great job in his descriptive narrative of what the streets looked like and the characters during this time frame. It is a very good story and I look forward to picking up more books by Mr. Mosley in the near future.
Reviewed by: Leona
September 17, 2014
Easy Rawlins is back and he's better than ever!
The black detective from LA who battles racism and crime has been a personal favorite of mine for over twenty years. Not only is Easy the perfect role model, a combination of tough guy, philosopher, neighborhood guardian, racial champion, and poet of black America's forgotten history, but his adventures are always filled with memorable dialogue and an unforgettable supporting cast. There's Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, the deadly outlaw who represents the darkest possibilities of ghetto life, and Jackson Blue, the lovable coward and ghetto hustler who just happens to be a computer genius. There's Mama Jo, the Witch Woman, and Mofass, the hard-hearted business man who tutors Easy in the ways of finance, and Jewelle, his business protegee.
LITTLE GREEN finds Easy moving into middle age, accepting mortality after a brush with death. Times are changing in LA, nearly two years after the 1965 Watts riots dramatized so unforgettably in LITTLE SCARLET. Easy is enthusiastic (maybe a little too enthusiastic) about the promise of Aquarius and the totally uninhibited lifestyle of the affluent white hippies who crowd the Sunset Strip. But when a good-natured but gullible young ghetto youth disappears after dropping LSD, Easy is forced to confront the darker side of the hippy counter-culture.
LITTLE GREEN is one of the strongest books in this series, right up there with BLACK BETTY and LITTLE SCARLET. There are some unintentionally funny moments, (would a forty-something black man who grew up with Bird and Monk really be willing to groove to the Jefferson Airplane? Were all hippies really and truly colorblind?) On the whole this is detective fiction at its finest, as well as being another chapter in a saga of black America that has no equivalent anywhere in our literature.
The black detective from LA who battles racism and crime has been a personal favorite of mine for over twenty years. Not only is Easy the perfect role model, a combination of tough guy, philosopher, neighborhood guardian, racial champion, and poet of black America's forgotten history, but his adventures are always filled with memorable dialogue and an unforgettable supporting cast. There's Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, the deadly outlaw who represents the darkest possibilities of ghetto life, and Jackson Blue, the lovable coward and ghetto hustler who just happens to be a computer genius. There's Mama Jo, the Witch Woman, and Mofass, the hard-hearted business man who tutors Easy in the ways of finance, and Jewelle, his business protegee.
LITTLE GREEN finds Easy moving into middle age, accepting mortality after a brush with death. Times are changing in LA, nearly two years after the 1965 Watts riots dramatized so unforgettably in LITTLE SCARLET. Easy is enthusiastic (maybe a little too enthusiastic) about the promise of Aquarius and the totally uninhibited lifestyle of the affluent white hippies who crowd the Sunset Strip. But when a good-natured but gullible young ghetto youth disappears after dropping LSD, Easy is forced to confront the darker side of the hippy counter-culture.
LITTLE GREEN is one of the strongest books in this series, right up there with BLACK BETTY and LITTLE SCARLET. There are some unintentionally funny moments, (would a forty-something black man who grew up with Bird and Monk really be willing to groove to the Jefferson Airplane? Were all hippies really and truly colorblind?) On the whole this is detective fiction at its finest, as well as being another chapter in a saga of black America that has no equivalent anywhere in our literature.
March 16, 2013
1967, summer, Los Angeles, free love and drugs…and danger
It’s the summer of love in the city of Los Angeles. The Watts riots are still fresh in everyone’s memories. Easy Rawlins has just escaped a close brush with death but when a friend from the underworld asks him to find a missing boy he begins to search. Easy is in his late forties and a World War II vet. He’s one of the few African American private eyes working in the city. When he encounters the growing hippie subculture he feels out of his element. His Jim Crow Texas childhood didn’t prepare him for a time and place where racial stereotypes were beginning to breakdown…except when they flip flopped and were still very much in place. Sunset Boulevard could be a deadly place to navigate. On one corner a free love flower girl was handing out daisies yet there were thugs with guns and racist cops lurking around the next corner. It was difficult to know who your friends were especially if you were black.
There’s a reason Mosley has stayed on the best seller lists for so long, mainly because he knows how to hold his audience. This is a murder mystery but it’s also social commentary. It’s also about the history of Los Angeles and the hippie movement with all its vicissitudes. It’s impossible not to be reminded of Raymond Chandler at the top of his game. Both Chandler and Mosley knew/know ALL of Los Angeles…the ugly as well as the beautiful. Mosley is at his best when he’s writing about family and the many ways he defines that concept. “Little Green” is a darn good who done it wrapped in a larger context.
This review is based on an e-galley provided by the publisher.
(This disclaimer is given as required by the FTC.)
It’s the summer of love in the city of Los Angeles. The Watts riots are still fresh in everyone’s memories. Easy Rawlins has just escaped a close brush with death but when a friend from the underworld asks him to find a missing boy he begins to search. Easy is in his late forties and a World War II vet. He’s one of the few African American private eyes working in the city. When he encounters the growing hippie subculture he feels out of his element. His Jim Crow Texas childhood didn’t prepare him for a time and place where racial stereotypes were beginning to breakdown…except when they flip flopped and were still very much in place. Sunset Boulevard could be a deadly place to navigate. On one corner a free love flower girl was handing out daisies yet there were thugs with guns and racist cops lurking around the next corner. It was difficult to know who your friends were especially if you were black.
There’s a reason Mosley has stayed on the best seller lists for so long, mainly because he knows how to hold his audience. This is a murder mystery but it’s also social commentary. It’s also about the history of Los Angeles and the hippie movement with all its vicissitudes. It’s impossible not to be reminded of Raymond Chandler at the top of his game. Both Chandler and Mosley knew/know ALL of Los Angeles…the ugly as well as the beautiful. Mosley is at his best when he’s writing about family and the many ways he defines that concept. “Little Green” is a darn good who done it wrapped in a larger context.
This review is based on an e-galley provided by the publisher.
(This disclaimer is given as required by the FTC.)
August 10, 2013
As I read this Easy Rawlins book it dawned on me that Walter Mosley is my favorite author of all time. I used to have Robert Heinlein in that vaunted place ... but Walter Mosley speaks to me through his various characters ... especially Easy, Mouse, Feather, Jesus, Jackson Blue and the rest of the Mosley Universe based in Los Angeles. I 'spose that part of my love of the Easy Rawlins series is that it is based in Los Angeles. I was born and raised in LA ... so I know most of the street corners and landmarks that are described in these mysteries. Plus I truly connect with the plight of a Black man in America ... and Easy Rawlins shares his insights throughout his journey and they each hit home.
I've seen folks publish Gibbs' rules on NCIS. I recall that folks kept track of the Ferenghi rules on Deep Space Nine. Somebody needs to track the 'lessons for a Black man' as recited over the years by Easy Rawlins.
Anyhow, I say all that to say that I have unreserved love for Little Green. It is both comfortable and enticing to read. I'm so glad that Easy has been resurrected. I won't give any spoilers ... but, the things that drove Easy to apparent suicide in the last book are resolved in a satisfying way in this book. Methinks that we could see future stories about Easy Rawlins as we move forward.
Very cool!
I've seen folks publish Gibbs' rules on NCIS. I recall that folks kept track of the Ferenghi rules on Deep Space Nine. Somebody needs to track the 'lessons for a Black man' as recited over the years by Easy Rawlins.
Anyhow, I say all that to say that I have unreserved love for Little Green. It is both comfortable and enticing to read. I'm so glad that Easy has been resurrected. I won't give any spoilers ... but, the things that drove Easy to apparent suicide in the last book are resolved in a satisfying way in this book. Methinks that we could see future stories about Easy Rawlins as we move forward.
Very cool!
July 15, 2013
Walter Mosley brings Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins back from the dead in “Little Green.” Six years ago, at the end of the series’ 11th novel, “Blonde Faith,” Mosley dispatched him. Much as Conan Doyle tossed Sherlock Holmes over Reichenbach Falls, Mosley drove Easy’s Pontiac off one of the Pacific Coast Highway’s treacherous cliffs. Turns out Mouse, Easy’s faithful friend and sidekick with a hair-trigger temper, literally carried him back from oblivion.
Coming slowly out of a coma, Easy feels as if he’s “crash-landed in a new world.” But he needs to get in gear when Mouse asks him to investigate the disappearance of Evander Noon. Juiced on “Gator’s Blood,” a potent concoction brewed by conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy lurches from high to low to high again as he untangles the path taken by the young man Mouse calls Little Green. The quest takes Easy to hippie-infested Sunset Strip (it’s 1967), and it’s as if his life flashes before him as the investigation connects to characters readers will remember from the 1990 mystery novel that launched Easy Rawlins, “Devil in a Blue Dress.”
This is vintage Mosley and a welcome rebirth for fans of the scrappy Rawlins, his courtly Southern manners intact along with a huge chip on his shoulder earned from racially-charged run-ins with his fellow Americans.
Coming slowly out of a coma, Easy feels as if he’s “crash-landed in a new world.” But he needs to get in gear when Mouse asks him to investigate the disappearance of Evander Noon. Juiced on “Gator’s Blood,” a potent concoction brewed by conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy lurches from high to low to high again as he untangles the path taken by the young man Mouse calls Little Green. The quest takes Easy to hippie-infested Sunset Strip (it’s 1967), and it’s as if his life flashes before him as the investigation connects to characters readers will remember from the 1990 mystery novel that launched Easy Rawlins, “Devil in a Blue Dress.”
This is vintage Mosley and a welcome rebirth for fans of the scrappy Rawlins, his courtly Southern manners intact along with a huge chip on his shoulder earned from racially-charged run-ins with his fellow Americans.
October 22, 2018
So what drew the author to return to his dead character? I don’t imagine Walter Mosley had any publisher pressure or even financial need. Maybe he felt like discussing hippy culture in relation to LA race relations in the mid-20th century? Maybe. But the journey taken by Easy Rawlins in his return to the dead is no mean literary feat either. In amongst the usual twist and turns of a Rawlins investigation you witness a man deal with his mortality not from the point of view of knowing one day everyone you’ve ever loved will die but from the other side, knowing that you already died and learning that perhaps it’s worth holding on to. For whatever reason he came back to this series the outcome was good and the series continues to be as enjoyable as ever.
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