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Easy Rawlins #10
Cinnamon Kiss
It is the Summer of Love and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armored car. It's farther outside the law than Easy has ever traveled, but his daughter, Feather, needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time. And his friend Mouse tells him it's a cinch. Then another friend, Saul Lynx, offers a job that might solve Easy's problem without jail time. He has to track the disappearance of an eccentric, prominent attorney. His assistant of sorts, the beautiful "Cinnamon" Cargill, is gone as well. Easy can tell there is much more than he is being told-Robert Lee, his new employer, is as suspect as the man who disappeared. But his need overcomes all concerns, and he plunges into unfamiliar territory, from the newfound hippie enclaves to a vicious plot that stretches back to the battlefields of Europe.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published September 19, 2005
224 people are currently reading
1728 people want to read
About the author
Walter Mosley
208 books3,942 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 252 reviews
March 6, 2018
An angrier than usual Easy Rawlins, in order to raise quick cash for his daughter’s medical treatment in Switzerland, agrees to work for a private-eye based in San Francisco. This is the mid-1960’s so enter -> Hippies.
He also chases down the titular flavored character who has connections to Haight-Ashbury and helps the reader think of that Neil Young song that has the word “cinnamon” in the title about every half page or so.
As in every decent Easy Rawlins book, the strength of the story rests on well-developed secondary characters, and there’s none better than Mouse, Rawlins’ dark, broody, violence-prone pal.
A digression on the nature of the sidekick!
Sidekicks offer many things:
They can lug heavy stuff around and kill giant spiders:
When they whine, they can help you appreciate that you aren’t an undersea-based hero:
You can do all sorts of neat things together:
And they cause endless amounts of grief:
So where does Mouse fit in?
First, calling him a sidekick can get you a cap popped in your face.
Second, he’s loyal to his friends, but unhinged enough to feel like you’re carrying a scorpion around in your pocket. Who’s gonna get stung? Maybe you? Mosley always presents this possibility (Mouse turns on Easy), but to my knowledge has never delivered.
Easy leans a little too much on Mouse in this average entry in a fine series. How many times can he evoke the name of Mouse to scare someone, gain access to somewhere he normally couldn’t tread or get laid by exotic dancers? Plus, Mosley loses the narrative thread once too often for this to be ranked as one of the better Easy Rawlins books.
He also chases down the titular flavored character who has connections to Haight-Ashbury and helps the reader think of that Neil Young song that has the word “cinnamon” in the title about every half page or so.
As in every decent Easy Rawlins book, the strength of the story rests on well-developed secondary characters, and there’s none better than Mouse, Rawlins’ dark, broody, violence-prone pal.
A digression on the nature of the sidekick!
Sidekicks offer many things:
They can lug heavy stuff around and kill giant spiders:
When they whine, they can help you appreciate that you aren’t an undersea-based hero:
You can do all sorts of neat things together:
And they cause endless amounts of grief:
So where does Mouse fit in?
First, calling him a sidekick can get you a cap popped in your face.
Second, he’s loyal to his friends, but unhinged enough to feel like you’re carrying a scorpion around in your pocket. Who’s gonna get stung? Maybe you? Mosley always presents this possibility (Mouse turns on Easy), but to my knowledge has never delivered.
Easy leans a little too much on Mouse in this average entry in a fine series. How many times can he evoke the name of Mouse to scare someone, gain access to somewhere he normally couldn’t tread or get laid by exotic dancers? Plus, Mosley loses the narrative thread once too often for this to be ranked as one of the better Easy Rawlins books.
May 27, 2022
Easy Rawlings, is black, in his mid-40s”, does “investigations” in Los Angeles, and is Walter Mosley’s prime vehicle for discussing issues of race and power in that city.
"I was the supervising senior head custodian of Sojourner Truth Junior High School, an employee in good standing with the LAUSD. I had over a dozen people who reported directly to me and I was also the manager of all the plumbers, painters, carpenters, electricians, locksmiths, and glaziers who came to service our plant. I was the highest-ranking black person on the campus of a school that was eighty percent black."
But that was all about to change: There was the war in Vietnam and the Watts riots and the Flower Power Revolution.
"The row of buildings across the street were all boarded up—every one of them. The riots had shut down SouthCentral L.A. like a coffin. White businesses had fled and black-owned stores flickered in and out of existence on a weekly basis. All we had left were liquor stores for solace and check-cashing storefronts in place of banks. The few stores that had survived were gated with steel bars that protected armed clerks. At least here the view matched my inner desolation."
"The sun was bright but there was a slight breeze that cut the heat. The day was beautiful if you didn’t look right at the burned-out businesses and boarded-up shops—victims of the Watts riots not yet a year old. The few people walking down the avenue were somber and sour looking. They were mostly poor, either unemployed or married to someone who was, and realizing that California and Mississippi were sister states in the same union, members of the same clan. I knew how they felt because I had been one of them for more than four and a half decades. Maybe I had done a little more with my life. I didn’t live in Watts anymore and I had a regular job....At other occasions I had felt superior to them. I’d had a job, a house in West L.A., a beautiful girlfriend who loved me, two wonderful children, and an office. But now I was one step away from losing all of that. All of it.”
"The people in that neighborhood had heart disease and high blood pressure, cancer of every type, and deep self-loathing for being forced to their knees on a daily basis. There was a war waging overseas, being fought in great part by young black men who had no quarrel with the Vietnamese people. All of that was happening but I didn’t have the time to worry about"
"I had changed the sign on my office door from EASY RAWLINS—RESEARCH AND DELIVERY to simply INVESTIGATIONS. I made the switch after the Los Angeles Police Department had granted me a private detective’s license for my part in keeping the Watts riots from flaring up again by squelching the ugly rumor that a white man had murdered a black woman in the dark heart of our boiler-pot city."
Easy has a life that is anything but easy. But now is a particularly difficult period for him with a daughter, Feather, who was dying unless she was able to get an expensive treatment in Switzerland and little time for Rawlings to corral that kind of money.
Enter a man who says his name is Robert E. Lee and he has a well-paying job for Easy. "I didn’t eat. I wasn’t hungry. All I thought about was doing a good job for the man named after one of my enemies by descendants of my enemies in the land of my people’s enslavement. But none of that mattered. I didn’t care if he hated me and my kind. I didn’t care if I made him a million dollars by working for him. And if he wanted a black operative to undermine black people, well . . . I’d do that too—if I had to..."
Things get complicated quickly:
"My job was to make those cops feel that Raymond and I had a legitimate reason to be there at that phone booth on that street corner. Most Americans wouldn’t understand why two well-dressed men would have to explain why they were standing on a public street. But most Americans cannot comprehend the scrutiny that black people have been under since the days we were dragged here in bondage. Those two cops felt fully authorized to stop us with no reason and no warrant. They felt that they could question us and search us and cart us off to jail if there was the slightest flaw in how we explained our business."
This Easy Rawlings adventure is one of Mosley’s most complex and most angry stories.
"“I’d be a fool if I told you everything’ll work out fine and you’d be a fool to believe it. But if you all mixed up with murder then you need somebody like me. It don’t matter that you got a business degree from UC Berkeley and a boyfriend got Paul Klee paintings hangin’ on his walls. If somethin’ goes wrong you the first one they gonna look at. An’ if a white killer wanna kill somebody a black woman will be the first on his list. ’Cause you know the cops will ask if you had a boyfriend they could pin it on, an’ if you don’t they’ll call you a whore and close the book.”"
There is a killer on the loose and Easy is both a suspect and a potential victim. He has to find a safe place to work out who is responsible and whom he can trust. "There’s no doubt about it. I was on the run in my own city, homeless if I wanted to live. Feather’s well-being was never far from my heart, but the road to her salvation was being piled with the bodies of dead white men. And you have to understand the impact of the death of a white man on a black southerner like me. In the south if a black man killed a white man he was dead. If the police saw him on the street they shot first and asked questions . . . never. If he gave himself up he was killed in his cell. If the constable wasn’t a murdering man then a mob would come and lynch the poor son of a bitch."
For those of us who knew this period of conflict and change; for those of us who know how we and others evolved through these days and years; for those of us who have noted the references in the current California “culture wars” to this period; this is an amazing high-speed ride down memory lane.
4.5*
"I was the supervising senior head custodian of Sojourner Truth Junior High School, an employee in good standing with the LAUSD. I had over a dozen people who reported directly to me and I was also the manager of all the plumbers, painters, carpenters, electricians, locksmiths, and glaziers who came to service our plant. I was the highest-ranking black person on the campus of a school that was eighty percent black."
But that was all about to change: There was the war in Vietnam and the Watts riots and the Flower Power Revolution.
"The row of buildings across the street were all boarded up—every one of them. The riots had shut down SouthCentral L.A. like a coffin. White businesses had fled and black-owned stores flickered in and out of existence on a weekly basis. All we had left were liquor stores for solace and check-cashing storefronts in place of banks. The few stores that had survived were gated with steel bars that protected armed clerks. At least here the view matched my inner desolation."
"The sun was bright but there was a slight breeze that cut the heat. The day was beautiful if you didn’t look right at the burned-out businesses and boarded-up shops—victims of the Watts riots not yet a year old. The few people walking down the avenue were somber and sour looking. They were mostly poor, either unemployed or married to someone who was, and realizing that California and Mississippi were sister states in the same union, members of the same clan. I knew how they felt because I had been one of them for more than four and a half decades. Maybe I had done a little more with my life. I didn’t live in Watts anymore and I had a regular job....At other occasions I had felt superior to them. I’d had a job, a house in West L.A., a beautiful girlfriend who loved me, two wonderful children, and an office. But now I was one step away from losing all of that. All of it.”
"The people in that neighborhood had heart disease and high blood pressure, cancer of every type, and deep self-loathing for being forced to their knees on a daily basis. There was a war waging overseas, being fought in great part by young black men who had no quarrel with the Vietnamese people. All of that was happening but I didn’t have the time to worry about"
"I had changed the sign on my office door from EASY RAWLINS—RESEARCH AND DELIVERY to simply INVESTIGATIONS. I made the switch after the Los Angeles Police Department had granted me a private detective’s license for my part in keeping the Watts riots from flaring up again by squelching the ugly rumor that a white man had murdered a black woman in the dark heart of our boiler-pot city."
Easy has a life that is anything but easy. But now is a particularly difficult period for him with a daughter, Feather, who was dying unless she was able to get an expensive treatment in Switzerland and little time for Rawlings to corral that kind of money.
Enter a man who says his name is Robert E. Lee and he has a well-paying job for Easy. "I didn’t eat. I wasn’t hungry. All I thought about was doing a good job for the man named after one of my enemies by descendants of my enemies in the land of my people’s enslavement. But none of that mattered. I didn’t care if he hated me and my kind. I didn’t care if I made him a million dollars by working for him. And if he wanted a black operative to undermine black people, well . . . I’d do that too—if I had to..."
Things get complicated quickly:
"My job was to make those cops feel that Raymond and I had a legitimate reason to be there at that phone booth on that street corner. Most Americans wouldn’t understand why two well-dressed men would have to explain why they were standing on a public street. But most Americans cannot comprehend the scrutiny that black people have been under since the days we were dragged here in bondage. Those two cops felt fully authorized to stop us with no reason and no warrant. They felt that they could question us and search us and cart us off to jail if there was the slightest flaw in how we explained our business."
This Easy Rawlings adventure is one of Mosley’s most complex and most angry stories.
"“I’d be a fool if I told you everything’ll work out fine and you’d be a fool to believe it. But if you all mixed up with murder then you need somebody like me. It don’t matter that you got a business degree from UC Berkeley and a boyfriend got Paul Klee paintings hangin’ on his walls. If somethin’ goes wrong you the first one they gonna look at. An’ if a white killer wanna kill somebody a black woman will be the first on his list. ’Cause you know the cops will ask if you had a boyfriend they could pin it on, an’ if you don’t they’ll call you a whore and close the book.”"
There is a killer on the loose and Easy is both a suspect and a potential victim. He has to find a safe place to work out who is responsible and whom he can trust. "There’s no doubt about it. I was on the run in my own city, homeless if I wanted to live. Feather’s well-being was never far from my heart, but the road to her salvation was being piled with the bodies of dead white men. And you have to understand the impact of the death of a white man on a black southerner like me. In the south if a black man killed a white man he was dead. If the police saw him on the street they shot first and asked questions . . . never. If he gave himself up he was killed in his cell. If the constable wasn’t a murdering man then a mob would come and lynch the poor son of a bitch."
For those of us who knew this period of conflict and change; for those of us who know how we and others evolved through these days and years; for those of us who have noted the references in the current California “culture wars” to this period; this is an amazing high-speed ride down memory lane.
4.5*
September 5, 2017
When I feel like a west coast version of Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series, I turn to Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series, and so far I haven't been let down.
Scudder is a white, middle-aged New Yorker, who's been through some shit.
Rawlins is a black, middle-aged Los Angeleno, who's been through some shit.
The narration of both relates a world-weary, experience-wise character with a plethora of baggage that keeps him simultaneously on edge as well as away from the edge, for who will care for their children or at least pay the child support should they act rash and get their head blown off?
Cinnamon Kiss is the tenth in the Rawlins series, which is set in the '60s. This one takes place in '66, so approximately a year after the Watts Riots and just as the hippie movement got going. Rawlins heads north to San Francisco to take on a high money case that could keep him from having to take part in a more lucrative, but more dangerous job: a heist that he would do if he had to, because his daughter is dying of a rare disease that would cost dearly to treat if it were even attempted.
As you see, Mosley is great at putting his MC's back straight up against the conflict wall. Human emotion and humanity's wide-ranging behavior infest everyone who walks through his scenes. There's barely a stiff to be found, unless we're talking about the dead kind.
I loved the look back at the Haight-Ashbury scene. I enjoyed how Mosley portrayed the older, war vet Rawlins as completely new to and somewhat baffled by these long-haired, free spirits. The mystery and detective work Rawlins is tasked with is quite contentious and plays hard upon the character's moral indignation. At times the book slides into heated romance that gets slightly pornographic to the point of feeling a bit out of place, but really it's just taking the old detective fiction of the '40s and '50s one step further than they were already treading.
Every time I finish one of Mosley's great books I always end up telling myself, "I need to read more Mosley!"
Scudder is a white, middle-aged New Yorker, who's been through some shit.
Rawlins is a black, middle-aged Los Angeleno, who's been through some shit.
The narration of both relates a world-weary, experience-wise character with a plethora of baggage that keeps him simultaneously on edge as well as away from the edge, for who will care for their children or at least pay the child support should they act rash and get their head blown off?
Cinnamon Kiss is the tenth in the Rawlins series, which is set in the '60s. This one takes place in '66, so approximately a year after the Watts Riots and just as the hippie movement got going. Rawlins heads north to San Francisco to take on a high money case that could keep him from having to take part in a more lucrative, but more dangerous job: a heist that he would do if he had to, because his daughter is dying of a rare disease that would cost dearly to treat if it were even attempted.
As you see, Mosley is great at putting his MC's back straight up against the conflict wall. Human emotion and humanity's wide-ranging behavior infest everyone who walks through his scenes. There's barely a stiff to be found, unless we're talking about the dead kind.
I loved the look back at the Haight-Ashbury scene. I enjoyed how Mosley portrayed the older, war vet Rawlins as completely new to and somewhat baffled by these long-haired, free spirits. The mystery and detective work Rawlins is tasked with is quite contentious and plays hard upon the character's moral indignation. At times the book slides into heated romance that gets slightly pornographic to the point of feeling a bit out of place, but really it's just taking the old detective fiction of the '40s and '50s one step further than they were already treading.
Every time I finish one of Mosley's great books I always end up telling myself, "I need to read more Mosley!"
December 5, 2023
Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins #10, Cinnamon Kiss (2005), is set post-Watts riots in 1966, the beginnings of the hippie movement that takes Easy to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. Summer of love. Flowers in your hair, lots of hair, acid, communes. . . but this is the lighter side of the angriest and most anguished book so far that also has its backdrop continuing racial “unrest,” and the escalation of the Viet Nam war. I don’t think all the parts quite come together, but each of the parts is interesting.
"The row of buildings across the street were all boarded up—every one of them. The riots had shut down SouthCentral L.A. like a coffin. White businesses had fled and black-owned stores flickered in and out of existence on a weekly basis. All we had left were liquor stores for solace and check-cashing storefronts in place of banks. The few stores that had survived were gated with steel bars that protected armed clerks. At least here the view matched my inner desolation."
Maybe the key personal aspect of this book for Easy is that hid daughter Feather is gravely ill, and Bonnie takes her to Paris for treatment. But they need 35K for treatment. What would you do for money if your daughter’s life was at stake? Mouse offers him a big pay off for helping with a bank heist. But Easy now has his PI license, and he is hired for 10K to find a missing attorney and his assistant, Philomena “Cinnamon” Cargill. He’s desperate:
“I didn’t care if I made him a million dollars by working for him. And if he wanted a black operative to undermine black people, well . . . I’d do that too—if I had to."
In the process, the tee-totalling Easy falls off the wagon, and “backslides” also in his relation to Bonnie as well (with Cinnamon). We should not be surprised by this as Easy always lusts after women (or, if you prefer, honors the various beauties of especially black women). He is spinning out of control in part due to his worries about Feather. He's lost.
Part of the plot takes him back to important secret papers he finds, taking him back to his service in WWII, discovering American support for the Nazis (which I also just read about in Rachel Maddow’s Prequel; cf. also Robert Hart's Hitler’s American Friends, too: Did you know that Henry Ford supplied huge amounts of money and supplies to the Nazi war effort, and funded one of the hugest pro-Nazi propaganda campaigns, and when his plants were destroyed during the war, he received generous compensation from the US??!). Anyway, this is in part where the trail leads for Easy, thoughI would have liked to see more on this.
Anyway, this is an average Mosley, which means it could be 4 stars as a standalone for many readers. I didn't love the ending with respect to Bonnie that I would call (way too) convenient for Easy. He owes her so much for taking care of his kids, at the very least.
"The row of buildings across the street were all boarded up—every one of them. The riots had shut down SouthCentral L.A. like a coffin. White businesses had fled and black-owned stores flickered in and out of existence on a weekly basis. All we had left were liquor stores for solace and check-cashing storefronts in place of banks. The few stores that had survived were gated with steel bars that protected armed clerks. At least here the view matched my inner desolation."
Maybe the key personal aspect of this book for Easy is that hid daughter Feather is gravely ill, and Bonnie takes her to Paris for treatment. But they need 35K for treatment. What would you do for money if your daughter’s life was at stake? Mouse offers him a big pay off for helping with a bank heist. But Easy now has his PI license, and he is hired for 10K to find a missing attorney and his assistant, Philomena “Cinnamon” Cargill. He’s desperate:
“I didn’t care if I made him a million dollars by working for him. And if he wanted a black operative to undermine black people, well . . . I’d do that too—if I had to."
In the process, the tee-totalling Easy falls off the wagon, and “backslides” also in his relation to Bonnie as well (with Cinnamon). We should not be surprised by this as Easy always lusts after women (or, if you prefer, honors the various beauties of especially black women). He is spinning out of control in part due to his worries about Feather. He's lost.
Part of the plot takes him back to important secret papers he finds, taking him back to his service in WWII, discovering American support for the Nazis (which I also just read about in Rachel Maddow’s Prequel; cf. also Robert Hart's Hitler’s American Friends, too: Did you know that Henry Ford supplied huge amounts of money and supplies to the Nazi war effort, and funded one of the hugest pro-Nazi propaganda campaigns, and when his plants were destroyed during the war, he received generous compensation from the US??!). Anyway, this is in part where the trail leads for Easy, thoughI would have liked to see more on this.
Anyway, this is an average Mosley, which means it could be 4 stars as a standalone for many readers. I didn't love the ending with respect to Bonnie that I would call (way too) convenient for Easy. He owes her so much for taking care of his kids, at the very least.
April 7, 2022
Another great read by Mosley. Couldn't put it down.
July 23, 2014
I think that one of the problems with most of Moseley's work is that it focuses far too much time and energy explaining to the reader the racial tensions between whites and blacks in the 1960's. It isn't off-hand and it isn't shown through dialogue or action, but narrated in the first person and blatantly spelled out on the soapbox. There's a way to work these observations into the narrative without taking detours, but he hasn't mastered that art. Not in this book, at least. Maybe that's because there is so little actual story here to be told that he needed to fill the rest of the book with commentary. However, preaching aside, i think he crafts a detective novel just below Chandler and hammet on the ladder. More akin to Ross Macdonald, as a peer.
Grade: D
Grade: D
April 13, 2025
This started out as 5 stars but went downhill as too much detailed sex and a very convoluted plot which confused me too much at times but then I am on pain killers. At least the little girl got a good treatment in Switzerland!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 24, 2021
Another Easy Rawlins crime story solved like only Easy can do. Walter Mosley is one of my go to authors and Easy is defintely my favorite book character. Loving this 15 book series!!
December 13, 2018
Mosley just keeps adding layers to Easy Rawlins as well a giving a good story in each of these installments. I just love this series.
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Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase
You can find me at:
•(♥).•*Monlatable Book Reviews*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @MonlatReader
Instagram: @readermonica
Facebook: Monica Reeds
Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase
January 8, 2021
One of the stronger chapters in Mr. Mosley's highly enjoyable Easy Rawlins series. Many lives, attitudes and hearts are on the line in Cinnamon Kiss....and not all who appear in its pages make it to the finish line. A crazy case with constantly raising stakes equals greater enjoyment once the truth is known and the dust (and gunpowder) settles.
Good times!
Good times!
December 9, 2022
Easy Rawlings is a fascinating guy! I have now read a number of the Walter Mosley books and have to say that this guy gets increasingly fascinating. I haven’t read the books in any particular kind of order numerically or logically. He talks a lot about living as a black man in the USA. As these fictional murder, mystery books go, there are a unreasonable number of dead bodies that appear regularly. And I guess because the detectives in these books are usually men, there is a reasonable amount of sex. The sex is not particularly graphic, but because it is Easy, it is always thoughtful both during and in retrospect.
February 9, 2021
“Every man’s hell is a private club,” my father used to tell me when I was small. “That’s why when I look at these white people sneering at me, I always smile and say, ‘Sure thing, boss!’ “ He knew that the hammer would fall on them, too. He forgot to say that it would also get me, one day.
I'm always of two minds about Easy Rawlins. I LIKE Easy, but I'm not so crazy about Mosley and his depiction of women. I try to enjoy these despite that, but Mosley makes it difficult! So, I enjoyed this, but I didn't like it. It was better than two stars, but it wasn't quite good enough for three stars.
Like almost all Easy Rawlins mysteries, I completely lose track of the path he's taking, I forget characters he met early in the book, and by the end I have no idea why he's going where he's going, and I NEVER guess the resolution. As Easy says in this book: “I don’t guess, Miss Adamant. I just ask questions and go where they lead me.” I may get confused along the way, but I enjoy the ride.
This book was set in the mid-60s, and it was pretty funny to see Easy running across hippies in San Francisco and being confused about their lingo. Mouse is back, and that's always fun, too.
There was an unusual amount of explicit sex in this book, which I wasn't expecting. A LOT of sex. That took me by surprise. I'm okay with sex scenes, but some of these seemed ridiculously gratuitous.
I've never understood the relationship between Easy and Bonnie,
October 30, 2010
Probably a 1.5 stars, actually…
Mosley can write, and I have been intending to pick up one of his Easy Rawlins books for ages… and being in LA this past weekend, with the need to purchase something from the local independent bookstore, I settled on this…
Alas, reading most of it on the plane ride back, and finishing the next night, I have to say while he is a very talented writer of the hard-boiled story, and captures vantages and insights, I was somewhat bothered by the, hmmm, overwhelming male perspective that pervaded this book. I mean, really, Easy getting hot babes at every turn?
Read some reviews on Amazon afterwards, and apparently this is, according to one reviewer who was bothered as I was, one of his weaker books in the series. So, I guess I'll try another one at another point.
Mosley can write, and I have been intending to pick up one of his Easy Rawlins books for ages… and being in LA this past weekend, with the need to purchase something from the local independent bookstore, I settled on this…
Alas, reading most of it on the plane ride back, and finishing the next night, I have to say while he is a very talented writer of the hard-boiled story, and captures vantages and insights, I was somewhat bothered by the, hmmm, overwhelming male perspective that pervaded this book. I mean, really, Easy getting hot babes at every turn?
Read some reviews on Amazon afterwards, and apparently this is, according to one reviewer who was bothered as I was, one of his weaker books in the series. So, I guess I'll try another one at another point.
June 28, 2014
Awesome ride! I’ve been an avid fan of Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series ever since Devil in a Blue Dress. Hands down, Walter Mosley sure knows how to write a crime fiction novel that leaves you wanting more and more. This time, Easy is in dire need of cash and fast. After deciding against robbing an armored car, he gets a job solving a case involving an eccentric, prominent attorney and tracking down the beautiful ‘Cinnamon’ Cargill, who may hold the key to some unanswered questions. The case proves more complicated but after enlisting Mouse, Saul Lynx and others, Easy wonders if robbing the armored car would have been easier.
Gotta get Blonde Faith and Little Green in the Easy Rawlins series and Mosley’s other work of fiction, Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore. Keep ‘em coming!
Gotta get Blonde Faith and Little Green in the Easy Rawlins series and Mosley’s other work of fiction, Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore. Keep ‘em coming!
October 24, 2011
I'd never heard of Walter Mosley til I discovered an entire SHELF of his books in a home that otherwise had no fiction collection. Figured I ought to at least find out who this person was who warranted such devotion!
The story was interesting, very noir - but I enjoyed the look through the character's eyes, black as they are, and in that specific time in history. It's worth a read if just to be reminded that it really was like that once (not so long ago), and it probably still IS like that in some places.
The story was interesting, very noir - but I enjoyed the look through the character's eyes, black as they are, and in that specific time in history. It's worth a read if just to be reminded that it really was like that once (not so long ago), and it probably still IS like that in some places.
April 29, 2020
Really enjoyed listening to this book. I truly forgot how good his "Easy" Rawlings mysteries are; so much to enjoy. You almost feel like you are that "fly on the wall" listening and watching ..just absorbing everything.
I definitely will need to go back and read his very 1st in the series... "Devil In a Blue Dress"!
I definitely will need to go back and read his very 1st in the series... "Devil In a Blue Dress"!
April 26, 2025
Too many characters and a rather convoluted plot. Michael Boatman rescues this audiobook with his narration.
October 5, 2020
Easy Rollins and his go-to guy, Mouse, are great characters. Seems weird, but some of their best scenes are the casual bits where they're eating or drinking in some off-the-wall joint. A couple of things that are less appetizing: the throng of women who can't resist Easy (and some he can't resist), a confusing, complex plot, too many characters, and a tear-jerker premise at odds with the tone.
A sickly daughter--with an obscure condition, no less--is an obvious ploy to elicit sympathy for Easy taking this case involving war-time Nazi profiteering. But why should he need more than a monetary incentive? It would fit better if he owed some gangsters or some such. His rationale does allow him to look the other way by working for a white supremacist. Still, I could picture Easy working for Lee anyway, if just for the challenge; as it is he pretty much 'converts' Lee by the end.
We do get the flavor of L.A. and the Bay Area underworlds, as expected. But that brings up the hippie-era time frame. What has that got to do with the story and the plot? Nothing really. Some of the descriptive stuff is interesting, and the spacey Dream Dog is cool; but this is literally window-dressing. These period vignettes seem to anticipate a major motif or theme, so it's disappointing when we discover that they're just discarded.
What rings true is the pervasive level of racism; both overt and its more subte varieties. This was after all only the beginning of interracial socializing. More casually, the uses of slang and dialect place us just where we need to be.
This novel has some nice touches, but gets bogged down with a series of guys/girls popping out of the woodwork--each given a chapter just to explain themselves--and then get killed. Even the suitably creepy Cicero turns out less inhuman than he was built up to be. Why would he give Easy a statement, comparing notes, so to speak, when he's dying?
Worth a look, if only to see what grub Easy and Mouse pile on their plates. This needs more Mouse and less of evere else.
A sickly daughter--with an obscure condition, no less--is an obvious ploy to elicit sympathy for Easy taking this case involving war-time Nazi profiteering. But why should he need more than a monetary incentive? It would fit better if he owed some gangsters or some such. His rationale does allow him to look the other way by working for a white supremacist. Still, I could picture Easy working for Lee anyway, if just for the challenge; as it is he pretty much 'converts' Lee by the end.
We do get the flavor of L.A. and the Bay Area underworlds, as expected. But that brings up the hippie-era time frame. What has that got to do with the story and the plot? Nothing really. Some of the descriptive stuff is interesting, and the spacey Dream Dog is cool; but this is literally window-dressing. These period vignettes seem to anticipate a major motif or theme, so it's disappointing when we discover that they're just discarded.
What rings true is the pervasive level of racism; both overt and its more subte varieties. This was after all only the beginning of interracial socializing. More casually, the uses of slang and dialect place us just where we need to be.
This novel has some nice touches, but gets bogged down with a series of guys/girls popping out of the woodwork--each given a chapter just to explain themselves--and then get killed. Even the suitably creepy Cicero turns out less inhuman than he was built up to be. Why would he give Easy a statement, comparing notes, so to speak, when he's dying?
Worth a look, if only to see what grub Easy and Mouse pile on their plates. This needs more Mouse and less of evere else.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 8, 2019
Dreams have always featured heavily in Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series. But this one in particular had a lot of dream sequences and descriptions of dreams. It kind of wore on me after awhile; I felt like Mosley was trying to stuff extra scenes to raise his page count since the plot was so thin. I don’t know what it’s like dealing with publishers but note to writers: if you can get away with a good story in 190 or 220 pages, it’s cool. I don’t need padding just to get to 300.
But while I didn’t like repetitious usage of dreams, I liked the story itself because it felt so personal to the character. Easy is desperately trying to score money in order to fund an operation for Feather, his adopted daughter. You can feel his paternal desperation off the page. And because Mosley is not afraid to break hearts (this is, after all, a series about a black PI operating in apartheid post-WWII Los Angeles), I really didn’t know if he would pull it off in time to save Feather.
Again, like other Easy books, there are familiar beats: the shapely women who want to sleep with Easy, Mose appearing in and out when convenient. The series is showing its tread. But still, Mosley has created such a fascinating character with Easy and done so much with him that I’m willing to be graceful towards the faults of the book. It’s well-plotted; something Mosley has gotten incrementally better at with each novel, and it has a beating heart at the middle. I appreciated this and the series.
But while I didn’t like repetitious usage of dreams, I liked the story itself because it felt so personal to the character. Easy is desperately trying to score money in order to fund an operation for Feather, his adopted daughter. You can feel his paternal desperation off the page. And because Mosley is not afraid to break hearts (this is, after all, a series about a black PI operating in apartheid post-WWII Los Angeles), I really didn’t know if he would pull it off in time to save Feather.
Again, like other Easy books, there are familiar beats: the shapely women who want to sleep with Easy, Mose appearing in and out when convenient. The series is showing its tread. But still, Mosley has created such a fascinating character with Easy and done so much with him that I’m willing to be graceful towards the faults of the book. It’s well-plotted; something Mosley has gotten incrementally better at with each novel, and it has a beating heart at the middle. I appreciated this and the series.
December 31, 2019
2017 Reading Challenge - A book with a eccentric character
I always enjoy an Easy Rawlins mystery. This one is not an exception to that. This mystery takes Easy Rawlins to San Francisco, where an eccentric detective hires him to find a missing woman known as Cinnamon Cargill who is associated with the detectives main interest, Axel Bowers. This case comes to Easy Rawlins at a time in his life where he is almost willing to take any job if it ensure he gets a large pay day. His daughter, Feather, is deathly ill and her only hope lies in an expensive clinic in Switzerland. His relationship with Bonnie is on the rocks, and his son, Jesus, is becoming a man. With his life in turmoil and change we follow him through this mystery that is entertaining, fast paced and laced with cultural and historical references that always add depth to this mystery series. I recommend it.
I always enjoy an Easy Rawlins mystery. This one is not an exception to that. This mystery takes Easy Rawlins to San Francisco, where an eccentric detective hires him to find a missing woman known as Cinnamon Cargill who is associated with the detectives main interest, Axel Bowers. This case comes to Easy Rawlins at a time in his life where he is almost willing to take any job if it ensure he gets a large pay day. His daughter, Feather, is deathly ill and her only hope lies in an expensive clinic in Switzerland. His relationship with Bonnie is on the rocks, and his son, Jesus, is becoming a man. With his life in turmoil and change we follow him through this mystery that is entertaining, fast paced and laced with cultural and historical references that always add depth to this mystery series. I recommend it.
February 9, 2012
Walter Mosley paints a magnificently vivid picture of Los Angeles “back in the day” in "Cinnamon Kiss." He can capture aspects of African American culture that is so spot on that I laugh out loud while reading (oh should I have written lol? Does that show my age?). That being said I do not like his books and did not like “Cinnamon Kiss.” I hate being able to predict the end of a suspense novel, and I did not predict this one. However, what I hate more than guessing the twists of a plot is not caring about them; sad but true. Mosley was unable to make me care about his characters; I cannot even recall their names, and it has only been about 3 weeks since I finished the book. I have tried, a number of times, to read Walter Mosley books, and this will be my last attempt.
January 1, 2015
Easy Rawlins and the cast of characters solve another crime of Nazis Bonds.
February 13, 2016
Walter mosley doesn't disappoint.
March 5, 2022
Trouble always come in twos
Easy has trouble coming from all different sides,in his house, in his business and to make matters worse he needs to find a boatload of money to save Feather.
Easy has trouble coming from all different sides,in his house, in his business and to make matters worse he needs to find a boatload of money to save Feather.
May 18, 2021
Un buen libro para disfrutar con las estupendas ambientaciones, con las acertadas descripciones de personajes , con los diálogos rápidos y punzantes y con la crítica social habitual de este autor. Va de menos a más: Al principio cuesta entrar pero luego la lectura se hace muy entretenida y engancha porque mantiene el ritmo y la intriga adecuados para no poder dejar de leer.
March 27, 2022
The book was fun to listen to. I got lost and though I know the ending I couldn't tell you how we got there.
July 27, 2020
This is my 10th Easy Rawlins story. After I saw the movie "Devil with a Blue Dress" I decided to read the book. I was hooked and started reading them in order. It is now 1966 and Mosley brings in some familiar characters but manages to use the feel of LA after the Watts riots and Easy's first contact with the SF hippie culture to give you a great feel for the time period. I will probably read some other stuff over the next couple of months and then I will be ready for #11 - Blonde Faith.
December 20, 2022
Walter Mosley never fails to deliver top notch noir.
January 29, 2020
Most interesting aspect of story was race relations in LA in the 1960's.
September 9, 2016
**edited 01/08/14
After dealing with the fallout from an external crisis--the LA riots--in the last books, Easy Rawlins must now face another more personal catastrophe: his adopted daughter Feather is extremely ill. The only way to save her may be to send her to an extremely expensive clinic abroad, and Easy is willing to do anything--up to and including murder--to get her the treatment she needs. Desperately searching for a case, he is faced with two alternatives: one, to accept a case from a pompous and mysterious "super-detective" and locate a missing man and the papers he ostensibly stole; two, to join his crooked friend Mouse on a bank heist. However, Easy quickly discovers that his first alternative may in fact lead him to even murkier waters than the second.
...
Due to my disapproval of GR's new and highly subjective review deletion policy, I am no longer posting full reviews here.
The rest of this review can be found on Booklikes.
After dealing with the fallout from an external crisis--the LA riots--in the last books, Easy Rawlins must now face another more personal catastrophe: his adopted daughter Feather is extremely ill. The only way to save her may be to send her to an extremely expensive clinic abroad, and Easy is willing to do anything--up to and including murder--to get her the treatment she needs. Desperately searching for a case, he is faced with two alternatives: one, to accept a case from a pompous and mysterious "super-detective" and locate a missing man and the papers he ostensibly stole; two, to join his crooked friend Mouse on a bank heist. However, Easy quickly discovers that his first alternative may in fact lead him to even murkier waters than the second.
...
Due to my disapproval of GR's new and highly subjective review deletion policy, I am no longer posting full reviews here.
The rest of this review can be found on Booklikes.
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