Pam's Book Log

22 March, 2003

This is the third of Mosley's historical detective novels featuring Easy Rawlins. This one takes place in 1956, only three years after A Red Death. Easy is married(!), with a baby girl and an adopted son, and has gotten out of the "favor business" which got him into so much trouble during his single days. Trouble catches up with him in spite of his best efforts; the police seek out his help in their investigation of a series of murders which have taken place in Easy's neighborhood. He's reluctant to get involved, but he gets railroaded into it when the serial killer slays a white girl from a well-off family (the previous victims were all lower-class black women), and the case makes the front page of the papers.

There are several plots going on in this novel, which don't have much, if any connection to one another. First is the main plot of the book, the murder investigation. It's enjoyable and well-constructed. All the steps in the investigation are clear to the reader. Part of it is standard Mosley grunge-- talking to low people in low places, violence, unpleasant run-ins with the authorities. The other part, concerning the dead white girl, made me feel like Easy had mistakenly blundered into a Ross Macdonald novel. There's the well-off family which seems to be perfect, with a troubled young adult child who winds up in difficulty (or dead, in this case), and the discovery that the trouble was not limited to the child. Of course, Easy is no Lew Archer, and he has little interest in helping people out. He's way more concerned with his own problems.

And woah, Nelly, does he ever have problems in this novel. I have no idea how Easy and his wife, Regina, ended up married to each other, but it was really a bad mistake. When it comes to women and relationships, Easy's always been what I like to refer to as "a total dirtbag," and marriage hasn't changed him one bit. He doesn't trust his wife, he hides things from her, he cheats on her, and he pays no attention to her needs. It's no surprise when she leaves him-- I'm more surprised she married him in the first place. The turmoil of his disintigrating marriage is Easy's main emotional conflict in this installment. It really makes it hard to sympathise with him.

Finally, there's a minor plot about a real-estate deal involving some property Easy owns. There's no connection with either of the two main plots, and I don't know why it was included in the book.

Finally, a thought which doesn't connect to anything I've written above, but which I've got to record for posterity. At one point in the book, Easy gets arrested and put in the county lockup, where somebody tries to kill him in what is obviously a set-up. His musings on the matter have a lot more resonance now than they probably did when this book was first published:

Somebody might not believe what happened to me. They might say that a prisoner in America always knows the specific crime of which he is accused. They might say that a man has a right to good counsel and at least a phone call.
At one time I would have said that white people had those rights but colored ones didn't. But as time went by I came to understand that we're all just one step away from an anonymous grave. You don't have to live in a communist country to be assassinated; just ask J.T. Saunders about that.
The police could come to your house today and drag you from your bed. They could beat you until you swallow teeth and they can lock you in a hole for months.
I knew all that but I put it far out of my mind. I just lay back on my cot and savored the cigarette.