Reading with Style discussion

Walter Ellis Mosley (born January 12, 1952) is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California; they are perhaps his most popular works. In 2020, Mosley received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, making him the first black male to receive the honor.

Mosley was born in California. His mother, Ella (born Slatkin), was Jewish and worked as a personnel clerk; her ancestors had immigrated from Russia. His father, Leroy Mosley (1924–1993), was an African American from Louisiana who was a supervising custodian at a Los Angeles public school. He had worked as a clerk in the segregated US army during the Second World War. His parents tried to marry in 1951 but, though the union was legal in California where they were living, no one would give them a marriage license.

He was an only child and ascribes his writing imagination to "an emptiness in my childhood that I filled up with fantasies". For $9.50 a week, Walter Mosley attended the Victory Baptist day school, a private African-American elementary school that held pioneering classes in black history. When he was 12, his parents moved from South Central to more comfortably affluent, working-class west LA.

This is the first part of Mosley's entry at Wikipedia.

A few of you have posted a Mosley book this Winter 20/21 season. I hope you've liked him. I like the way he writes, and I like his characterizations. You don't often get both those attributes when reading mysteries. I find him definitely in the hard-boiled or noir category.

When I read Devil in a Blue Dress, I knew I wanted to read more. I think, however, I could never take a steady diet of him.

I've read the Fearless Jones trilogy (at this point), and I know I've raved about this series in this group. I would consider these novels noir. I live in hope that he will write another Fearless Jones novel, but it appears he's left those characters behind. Either way, I would recommend them. (Oh, and you do have to read them in order.)

This is the RwS review I wrote for the last of the trilogy:

Fear of the Dark
I was happy to see a spot for this book in this season’s tasks, but I’m sad as well – now I’ve finished this series (really a trilogy). I have just loved the Fearless Jones novels, and this one was no exception.

The actual narrator is Paris Minton, and the story is told effectively in first person. Fearless is his true and steadfast friend in the complex and uncertain world of early 1950s Compton. Paris is a small(ish) man and a self-admitted coward who would rather spend his time in his bookstore, reading. However, trouble often seems to come knocking on his door. In this case, in the form of his ne’er do well cousin (Ulysses/Useless) and a young woman Paris had a fling with. The knock on the door that forces Paris to action is from his Aunt Three-Hearts, who comes up from Louisiana to find her son, Useless. He and Fearless have to figure out where Useless has disappeared to and that involves figuring out exactly what racket he was involved in, and who with.

You really feel like you are in Compton/LA of that era, or at least it seems authentic to me. I like that the characters are racially diverse, and even though racism (on the part of the police) was a very real thing Mosley doesn’t overdo it – it’s just part of everyday and affects the decision making of Paris and Fearless. It is a well written addition to the mystery-noir genre. 4*

Thanks, Valerie. I've added the first in the series to my over-burdened wish list! (But it's available to me on Overdrive - does that make it easier to get to?)

I really enjoyed Devil in a Blue Dress! I just thought at the end (view spoiler)[it was hard to believe that Mouse would have known Daphne as a child, thousands of miles away (hide spoiler)] but that only took it from 5 stars to 4 stars for me. I will definitely look out for more from Mosley, and I have seen other titles by him coming in to the thrift store where I work when the pandemic doesn't close it, so I will be interested to see what his later books were like. I thought that one was amazing for a first novel.