Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley

The first novel by “master of mystery” (The New York Times) Walter Mosley, featuring Easy Rawlins, the most iconic African American detective in all of fiction. Named one of the “best 100 mystery novels of all time” by the Mystery Writers of America.

The year is 1948, the town is Los Angeles.

Easy Rawlins, a black war veteran, has just been fired from his job at a defense factory plant. Drinking in his friend’s bar, he’s wondering how he’ll manage to make ends meet, when a white man in a linen suit approaches him and offers him good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a missing blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

Easy has no idea that by taking this job, his life is about to change forever.

movie did the book justice. great read!

All these foolish men
taken in by some blonde hair
phony as her smile.

As far as hard-boiled detective novels go, I enjoyed the writing style in Devil in a Blue Dress more than most. The narrative and the mystery seem to meander, and unlike puzzle mysteries, you are not given the opportunity to solve along with the detective. I also wished Easy had more drive, more hope for a certain outcome. But I did want to keep reading throughout.

Update: I watched the movie version and it was excellent, I dare say better than the book.

It's 1948 Los Angeles and Easy Rawlins suddenly finds himself out of a job with a mortgage to pay.

He loves his home and the pride he gets owning his spot. Easy isn't about to lose his place which leads him to taking DeWitt Albright's money. His gut tells him he should know better even with Joppy's introduction but it's a simple gig. Find one Daphne Monet and tell Albright where she is. Nothing else. But there's no such thing as easy money and the bodies start piling up.

I'm woefully ignorant of the noir genre so I followed this up quickly with the Denzel Washington led movie of the same name. (A young Don Cheadle is absolutely perfect as Mouse.) The two are now intwined in my head despite their slightly differing plot threads.

It's smooth storytelling and amounts to Easy's origin story before becoming a hard boiled dick. (That just sounds ridiculous) For now he's an unwitting and somewhat unwilling detective trying to keep his head above water. I liked the added tension of the police - he's not the grizzled renegade that's a step ahead of the police but a black man just as likely to take the fall for crimes he didn't commit or simply suffer a beating at their hands. It adds an extra dimension to the traditional noir genre.