Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley

Published by Doubleday on June 14, 2016

Set in 1968, Charcoal Joe is the latest chapter in the story of Easy Rawlins. Continuing a theme that began in Rose Gold, Easy’s life seems like it’s getting better. He’s started a private detective agency with Tinsford “Whisper” Natly and Saul Lynx. Things are going well with his daughter Feather. He’s planning to make his life complete by marrying the woman he loves. But Easy’s life is never easy. The question that series fans will soon ask is whether Easy will again be enveloped by the darkness that defined his life in Blonde Faith and Little Green.

Aside from the personal drama that afflicts Easy’s life, the plot of Charcoal Joe involves a job that Easy is hired to do for a friend of his deadly friend Mouse. The friend, Charcoal Joe, wants Easy to investigate the murder of two men. A young physicist named Seymour Brathwaite has been convicted of the crime. Charcoal Joe wants Easy to prove Seymour’s innocence.

During the murder investigation, Easy learns that are large sum of money has gone missing, as have some diamonds. Several unsavory characters, ranging from gangsters to a police detective, would like to find the money.

Charcoal Joe returns a number of familiar series characters, including Fearless Jones, Mouse, and Jackson Blue. Easy has assembled a makeshift family, many of whom are of dubious character, but they all take care of each other, which makes them easy to like, if not admire. Feather serves as his anchor, but keeping a lover in his life is problematic. Easy learns something new about life from every encounter with another character, and so does the reader.

Easy’s observations of life are sharpened by the dangers and petty insults that black men must endure to survive in 1960s Los Angeles. His is a world of “dark skin, darker lives, and a slim chance of survival.” Yet it’s a changing world and Easy is hopeful that the future will be better, for the sake of Feather and other members of the next generation if not himself. Then as today, the changes are arriving at a snail’s pace, leaving Easy at once impatient and grateful.

If only for the brightness of his prose and the clarity of the images he evokes, Walter Mosley is always a joy to read. The plot of Charcoal Joe is intricate but never padded or confusing. But it is the depth of Mosley’s exploration of his characters that puts him in the top ranks of crime writers. Danger forces Mosley “to appreciate life; to understand its frailty, transience, and its incalculable value,” but the burden of history forces Mosley to understand himself, or at least to try.

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And Sometimes I Wonder About You by Walter Mosley

Published by Doubleday on May 12, 2015

Walter Mosley has a unique ability to see the uncommon in common people, to perceive the humanity to which inhuman circumstances give birth. His characters are damaged and betrayed. They have been abused and they have been abusive. They often live on the fringes of society, yet they retain their dignity, their wisdom, and their strength. They reinvent themselves every day because that's what life is -- a process of reinvention. Few writers convey that as well as Mosley.

When a beautiful woman walks into Leonid McGill's life (or, at any rate, sits next to him on the train), he knows he is in for trouble. Five minutes later, Marella Herzog owes him $1,500, his fee for protecting her from an attacker who was supposedly sent by her former fiancé. Throughout And Sometimes I Wonder About You, McGill ruminates about the powerful women who dominate his life, including the wife who is receiving convalescent care, the dissatisfied part-time lover, the secretary who is finding ways to recover from a horrific childhood, and now Marella.

Also playing a vital role in the story is McGill's son Twill, who has taken on a private investigation of his own. Of course, his activities cause problems for McGill. And then there's Hiram Stent, a vagrant whose case McGill turns down until, inevitably, his sense of justice compels him to look into Hiram's problem by finding a missing woman. In the time-honored tradition of PI fiction, McGill is soon working for free, because helping those in need is the right thing to do. Before the end of the novel, McGill's sense of justice has made him the target of three groups of people who want to kill him. In other words, a typical day in McGill's life.

The family element -- not just with Twill, but also with McGill's absent father, whose absence ends in this novel -- is just as strong as the larger plot threads. As he so often does with consummate skill, Mosley weaves it all together to create a tight, fast-moving story that works as a thriller, as a family drama, as an unconventional love story, and as a psychological portrait of a man who is struggling to come to terms with his past and to invent a better future.

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Rose Gold by Walter Mosley

Published by Doubleday on September 23, 2014

Easy Rawlins has lost interest in being a private detective (not surprising, given his loss of interest in life that recent novels chronicle) but his daughter has a chance to go to an expensive private school so he can't turn down a lucrative offer to investigate the disappearance and potential kidnapping of Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a prominent weapons manufacturer. The mayor and the chief of police want Rawlins on the case and give him little opportunity to turn it down despite Easy's uneasy feeling about it. They need Rawlins because he's black. They believe his race will give him access to Bob Mantle, a black boxer-turned-revolutionary who has been seen with Rosemary in Los Angeles.

There are, of course, additional complications to the assignment that become apparent only after Easy's work is well underway. Patty Hearst echoes in the story, as do other events from the time in which the novel is set. Along the way Easy does a favor for his cop friend, Melvin Suggs, who is experiencing difficulties of his own. Several other series regulars return in small supporting roles.

Walter Mosely always tells a good story. This isn't the most compelling plot in the Easy Rawlins series but it is credible and entertaining. There are so many other things to like about a Mosely novel, however, that the plot often takes a back seat. Easy always peppers his first-person narrative with observations about the state of the nation and the changing world, a world that cannot change fast enough to suit him. As always, Easy's observations of racial injustice are pointed and personal. Easy is always a half step away from being beaten, murdered, or jailed because of his skin color. In his world, race is more likely than guilt or innocence to determine who will be arrested and punished.

At the same time, Rose Gold, like the other novels in the Easy Rawlins series, emphasizes the importance of family and friendships as a refuge from racism. Easy is renewed and restored by the insights he gains during his investigation, a welcome change from the darkness he's experienced in the last couple of novels. Even without the engaging characters, poignant moments, and sharp prose, Easy's renewal would be reason enough for an Easy Rawlins fan -- which I am -- to embrace Rose Gold.

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Jack Strong: A Story of Life after Life by Walter Mosley

Published digitally by Open Road Media on July 29, 2014

"Jack Strong" is a short story that is available for purchase in a digital version. This blog usually reviews books, but is making an exception for this story because (A) it is written as if it is the first in a series and (B) the blog is a fan of Walter Mosley.

As a general rule, I like Walter Mosley's crime fiction more than his science fiction, but anything he writes is certain to be literate and thought-provoking. The short story "Jack Strong" is no exception.

A man awakens in Las Vegas with conflicting memories. He recalls being a male pit boss, a female stripper, an old man at a bus stop, an obese woman playing slot machines. He notices that he has white male hands except for one black finger and one young woman's finger. He looks in a mirror and sees that he is a patchwork of skin tones, with different eye colors and varying colors of hair on different parts of his body. He is, figuratively and perhaps literally, Everyman -- and Everywoman, penis notwithstanding -- "an agglomeration of potentials on one side and personalities on the other." His driver's license says he is Jack Strong.

Momentarily settling into the personality of Lance Richards, Strong finds Richards' past catching up with him when he enters the casino Richards once managed. Fortunately, Strong is strong and at least one of his personalities is a skilled fighter. The violence that follows triggers a vigorous debate among his various selves -- some virtuous, some shady, some religious, some hedonistic -- about the morality and the consequences of his actions.

While all of the people residing in Strong's head are dead, they are capable of learning and changing. Working together, considering issues jointly, they make Strong a better person than some of his more nefarious identities would be if left to their own devices. Perhaps Mosley's point is that we are all influenced by many people over the course of our lives, and that we benefit from listening to their collective wisdom. Or perhaps his point is that we are all a complex swirl of good and bad and that we need to make choices that overcome our darker impulses.

The concept of multiple identities inhabiting a single individual has been done before and nothing much here is new. How Jack Strong came to exist is never explained, which I count as a mild weakness in the story. "Jack Strong" lacks the depth and emotional resonance of Mosley's best work, but you'd expect that in a short story. I still prefer the complexity of Mosley's crime fiction, but the characters are appealing and the plot, while a bit thin, is enjoyable.

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Little Green by Walter Mosley

Published by Doubleday on May 14, 2013 

The good (if not particularly surprising) news for Easy Rawlins fans is that Easy isn't dead -- he just thinks he is. A few paragraphs into the opening chapter, his revival from a coma gives birth to a new Easy Rawlins adventure. Even before he is back on his feet he has a mission: to find a missing boy named Evander Noon (a/k/a Little Green). At about the novel's midpoint, Easy takes on a second assignment, helping a friend who is the victim of a blackmail scheme.

Walter Mosley always captures the place and time in which his novels are set in high definition detail. Little Green takes place Los Angeles in 1967, a time when hippies were still a phenomenon and the Watts riots were the prism through which whites viewed blacks. Mosley builds characters who, over time, become as familiar and as real as distant friends, yet -- like real people -- they're still capable of surprising behavior. For Easy Rawlins fans, Little Green is worth reading to discover the new stage of his life that Easy has reached. This is a mellower, more optimistic Easy, one who is finally coming to terms with his difficult life, one who, having been reborn, is starting over (just as, in many senses, the country was doing).

It's a given that Mosley's dynamic prose will sweep a reader along from his first word to his last. The plot of Little Green, on the other hand, is less engrossing than Mosley has delivered on his better days. The story moves at a steady pace but it never soars. There are so many backstories in play that they tend to overshadow the central plot. The voodoo medicine that keeps Rawlins going is a silly distraction. Yet Mosley has always been a chronicler of the human condition, and if the plot is unexciting, it nonetheless has revelatory moments that illuminate the darkness within his characters, as well as their struggles to overcome it. Little Green is ultimately a story about a changing world, one that offers more hope than despair. Viewed in that light, the novel is a modest success.

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