Easy Rawlins

Easy Rawlins is back.  His creator, Walter Mosley, appeared to have killed him off about five years ago following a series of excellent novels commencing with Devil in a Blue Dress.  The Denzel Washington movie was well done but the book is better.  The 1990 publication and subsequent novels will tell you things about LA you probably will not have read anywhere else.  Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is a WW II vet living in Watts.  When you first meet Easy, he is an unemployed defense plant worker circa 1948.  The 11 prior novels carry you into the 1960s.  The most recent novel, Little Green, takes place in 1968.  The book opens with Easy recovering from the auto crash which we thought killed him.  While Easy flows from the Phillip Marlowe tradition, the character and the novels explore the racial and social injustices of LA and do so while contrasting  with what existed in the South.   Easy was born in Louisiana and spent his pre-WW II teenager years in the Houston’s Fifth Ward.  Little Green continues the Easy tradition with the storyline of finding a friend’s son while exploring people’s reaction to a Black man who is a licensed private investigator (quite rare) and owns apartments.  I’ve tried reading Mosley’s non-Easy Rawlins novels.  I only recommend the Rawlins series.  Easy is a complex man and the underlying stories will hold your interest while providing needed information.