Walter Mosley Mystery & Detective Fiction Analysis
Walter Mosley uses the detective-fiction genre to write novels about race and poverty in the mid-twentieth century. His style is typical of that of the hard-boiled genre with clean sentences, fast-paced action, and psychological and social realism. The main character in his first series is a man succeeding on the edges of the system. Coming to Los Angeles after being in the service during World War II, Easy Rawlins found work at a factory and bought a small house. He seemed to be living the American Dream, but the racial discrimination of his plant foreman cost him his job and led directly to his new career as a private investigator. Detecting allows him to follow his own standards and goals and to aid others whom the system has failed.
Easy always struggles with using violence during his investigations, but his friend and sometimes partner Mouse reacts instinctively and almost always with the use of force, often deadly. For this reason, Easy is afraid of Mouse but finds himself invariably needing Mouse, almost as if Mouse completes him, suggesting that in the racially/socially unequal world in which Easy and Mouse live, violence is sometimes the only answer. Through this struggle, Mosley demonstrates inadequacies of the social and judicial system. His use of characters from the black, Hispanic, Asian, and working-class white communities allows him to show that poverty and abuse affect all races.
In his second detective series, Mosley introduces two characters who also work in Los Angeles and in many ways are similar to Easy and Mouse. The narrator of this series is Paris Minton, a black man from Louisiana who runs a secondhand bookstore. He lives in the back of the store and seems to have few needs beyond those that owning the store can meet. However, when trouble finds Paris, he seeks his friend Fearless Jones, a man feared and respected by the black community in Los Angeles. Unlike Paris, Fearless is not a man who thinks too much about a situation. He seems instinctively to know what needs to be done and then does whatever that is, even if it involves violence. Fearless does, however, rely on Paris to make the more complicated decisions. Paris does not seem to fear Fearless the way Easy does Mouse. In fact, Paris and Fearless seem to be more successfully synergistic than Easy and Mouse.
Mosley’s series also include interesting female characters. Typically, in hard-boiled detective fiction, women are often the source of evil and violence. Such women are present in Mosley’s work—for example, Elana Love in Fearless Jones (2001)—but more often the women are seen as victims of the system, such as Daphne Monet in Devil in a Blue Dress. However, other women, such as Easy’s wife, Regina, who first appears in White Butterfly (1992), and Loretta, a Japanese woman who works for the bail bondsman Milo Sweet in the Fearless Jones series, are strong and independent. This use of three-dimensional female characters is unusual in much hard-boiled detective fiction written by men.
Mosley’s rich descriptions of Los Angeles in the early 1950’s turn the city into a character in the novels. Raymond Chandler similarly wrote about Los Angeles, focusing on Hollywood in the 1930’s and 1940’s, but Mosley seems to be the first to use the Watts area so integrally. Many of the people living in the area have moved there from the South: Easy Rawlins is from Houston’s Ninth Ward, and Paris and Fearless are from Louisiana. In both series, the main characters and the other inhabitants of Watts have connections to each other through their past...
(This entire section contains 1776 words.)
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in the South or their family members who still live there. Watts is rich with transplanted southern culture.
Devil in a Blue Dress
Mosley’s first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, introduces Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, who in the opening of the novel is not a detective but a factory worker recently fired for standing up to his white foreman. After losing his job, Easy has no way to make his mortgage payments, which leads him in desperation to accept a job sent his way by Joppy, the bartender at a local establishment. Joppy introduces Easy to a threatening white man named Albright, who is looking for a white woman named Daphne Monet. Albright says Daphne’s former lover wants to get in touch with her, and he wants Easy to help him find her.
A string of murders apparently connected with the missing woman alerts Easy to the danger of the situation. He is picked up and beaten by the police. On his release, he summons Mouse, his friend from Houston, a fearless man who has killed before and would not think twice about doing it again. At difficult moments, Easy hears an inner voice that tells him how to “survive like a man.”
Daphne is linked to gangster Frank Johnson, a black man whom Easy is afraid of and wants to avoid. Daphne calls Easy to ask him for help, and he helps her instead of reporting her location to Albright. Daphne disappears again, taking with her $30,000, which Easy believes Albright is after. Forced to contact Frank Johnson, Easy is about to be killed by Johnson when Mouse shows up, scaring Johnson away.
When Daphne calls again, Easy takes her for safety to the home of his Hispanic friend Primo. While there, Easy and Daphne become lovers, but Albright and his men find them and take Daphne. Easy finds Daphne with Albright and Joppy, who are trying to find out where the money is. Mouse, always interested in money, kills Joppy, mortally wounds Albright, and makes Daphne reveal the whereabouts of the money. Daphne also reveals that she is Frank Johnson’s half sister. She has left her previous lover to keep him from learning that she is not white. Daphne leaves Easy because he now knows her racial secret. Before she leaves, Daphne, Easy, and Mouse divide the $30,000. Easy is left to explain the situation to the police without implicating Mouse and Daphne; he does implicate Albright, Joppy, and another man.
At the end of the novel, Easy takes Jesus, a boy he has rescued from sexual abuse earlier in the story, to live with Primo and his wife. Easy cannot make Daphne accept her own racial identity or change other social ills, but he is able to save this one child.
White Butterfly
White Butterfly, set in 1956, finds Easy married and raising two children, an infant from his new marriage and Jesus, the orphan from the earlier books. Easy has not told his wife, Regina, about his business holdings or his detective work.
Easy is approached by a black police officer and a number of high-ranking city officials for help in finding a serial murderer in Watts. The interest in the case is a result of the recent victim being a white college student from a respectable family. When officials threaten to pin the crime on Mouse, Easy is forced to help. Visiting local bars and asking questions lead Easy to a suspect and to the surprising discovery that the white coed led a double life working in Watts as the White Butterfly. The victim’s father, a former district attorney, wants this information suppressed; this cover-up, along with that of a chain of similar murders in San Francisco, leaves Easy frustrated.
Easy discovers that the victim’s father is the murderer. In part because of his lack of openness, Easy’s marriage fails, leaving him heartbroken. He begins drinking heavily until Mouse and Jesus rescue him from self-destruction.
During this investigation, Easy helps his business manager, Mofass, get out of trouble with a group of white developers, which also helps solidify Easy’s financial situation. So despite the failure of his marriage, he gains financial independence.
Fearless Jones
The first novel in this series, Fearless Jones, is named for one of its two main characters, Tristan “Fearless” Jones, a World War II veteran. The story opens in the used bookstore of Paris Minton, the other main character and narrator of the series. The time is 1954; the place is the Watts district of Los Angeles. The store has been open about a month, and Paris is doing enough business to pay the bills. This job allows him to do what he likes best—read. A young woman, Elana Love, enters the store and asks for the Reverend Gross. Paris tells her that Gross used to preach at a storefront church down the street, but one night two months previously, everything was moved out from the site. Huge Leon Douglas shows up looking for Elana Love and beats up Paris.
Later that night, his bookstore is burned down. Paris needs his friend Fearless Jones to assist him, but Fearless is in jail. Paris feels guilty for having refused to pay Fearless’s fine, especially because he now truly needs Fearless. Paris takes his only remaining money and goes to bail bondsman Milo Sweet to get Fearless out. Once together, Fearless and Paris start looking for Elana Love.
Fearless and Paris go to the home of Fanny and Sol Tannenbaum; Elana had told Paris that Leon is looking for her because he thinks she has a bond in Mr. Tannenbaum’s name that is worth thousands of dollars. When they arrive, they find that Sol has been stabbed. After the police leave, Fanny invites them to stay with her because they have nowhere to go and she is afraid to stay alone. Before Sol is taken to the hospital, Fearless promises him that he will protect Fanny.
The case involves a crooked police officer, some Israeli agents, the mob, a Nazi pretending to be an Israeli agent, and the two other members of the Tannenbaum family, Gella and Morris. Both Fanny and Sol die, but not before Sol tells Fearless where to find the money he has embezzled from Zimmerman, the former Nazi who got the money by telling frightened Jews in Germany that he would take them to freedom in exchange for their valuables. Sol intended to go to Israel with the money. Fearless, Paris, and Milo escape a shootout with Zimmerman, Leon, and other Nazis, but Paris is arrested for arson related to the fire at his store. When he is released several weeks later, Gella has gotten the money and given Paris, Fearless, and Milo a cut before leaving for Israel. It is enough for Paris to start a new bookstore.
By using his detective team to assist the displaced Jewish family, Mosley demonstrates the possibilities for racial and ethnic harmony between Jews and African Americans.
