Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley

I need to find somebody and I might need a little help looking ... The summer of '48 in the city of Angels and there's heat on the streets when Daphne Monet hits the sidewalk. Heat when she disappears with a trunkload of somebody else's cash. Easy Rawlins is a war veteran just fired from his job. Drinking in a friend's bar, he wonders how to meet his mortgage when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will locate Miss Monet, a blonde with a reputation. It's a simple decision, but for one thing. Nobody warned him - better the devil you know ...

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.