19 December, 2002
A Red Death
Walter Mosley
1991
245 pp, MMPB
This is the second book in Mosley's Easy Rawlins series, following Devil in a Blue Dress. It takes place in Los Angeles, in 1953. Easy has done well for himself since the last book, and is now in the real estate business and the "favor business" (like the PI business, only less formal). Unfortunately, he's also been in the tax-evasion business, and the IRS has caught up with him. However, the FBI needs somebody to spy on a suspected Communist spy named Chaim Wenzler, who is involved with the Easy's neighborhood church. Since the 1953 FBI is composed entirely of white men, they need outside help. Easy is offered a chance to get out of his tax problems, if he does the spying. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Easy agrees. So, he does some spying, and finds some stuff out (the most important bits of which he doesn't immediately share with the FBI). Then, people start getting killed, and Easy turns out to be the cops' number one suspect.
This book is all about friendship and betrayal. Easy's assignment is to get into a man's good graces in order to betray him. Worse, over the course of the assignment, Easy discovers that he has a lot in common with Wenzler, and a deep, genuine friendship develops between the two men. This makes it even harder for Easy to go through with his mission. Wenzler isn't the only friend who Easy does wrong; he's always been in love with EttaMae Harris, the wife of his best friend Mouse, and when she gives him the opportunity to sleep with her, he jumps into bed with her as quickly and as often as he can. Of course, he believes she's in love with him and intends to divorce her husband, but she's really just using him. The solution to the murder mystery hinges on yet another betrayal of friendship (to say more would be a spoiler).
As in the previous book in the series, race plays a big role. Devil in a Blue Dress was about how unpleasant it was to be an African-American in post-War Los Angeles, and the people had little option but to suck it up and deal. The racial themes in A Red Death are less of a downer. It's set eight years later, and the civil rights movement is getting started. There's still plenty of racism to go around, but there are signs that things might be changing. Not all of the white people Easy meets look down on him because of his race, and one of the police detectives who investigates the murders is a black man, partnered with a white detective.
I'm not sure that the mystery plot completely hangs together, the solution seems to come out of left field, but I may just have missed the relevant clues.