Much like Raymond Chandler did in his portrait of Southern California for his fictional private eye Philip Marlowe, or Dashiell Hammett did with Sam Spade, Mr. Mosley always gives the Easy Rawlins novels a thorough description of black life and culture in the Los Angeles area in the 1950s and the 1960s. Still, Easy is committed to the case for no other reason than to do a favor for Mouse. Doing a favor for a gangster can be hazardous to one’s health, no matter if you succeed or fail. The man who wants Easy Rawlins to clear the accused is Charcoal Joe, a legendary black mobster currently in jail.Įasy is quickly wedged between a rock and a hard place. The homicide victims have ties to the Los Angeles crime world of the early 1960s. The accused murderer is a young black man, a graduate student at Stanford University, and has no prior police record. Mosley gives the reader a lot to chew on in setting up the favor. Early in the new novel, Mouse asks Easy for a favor, telling the investigator that the son of an acquaintance of his has been wrongfully charged with double homicide. One of his oldest friends is Raymond “Mouse” Alexander. “I took in a deep breath through my nostrils and smiled, thinking that a poor black man from the deep South like myself was lucky not to be dead and buried, much less a living, breathing independent businessman,” he thinks.Įasy’s new agency doesn’t mean old friends stop relying on him. As he walks to his new office, Easy realizes just what has happened to his life.

With money he garnered from his last case, “ Rose Gold” (2014), he has started his own private investigation agency, complete with two associates. Mosley’s 14th Easy Rawlins mystery, “ Charcoal Joe,” shows just how far the character has come since that first case.

He takes to the streets of Los Angeles in the early 1940s and feels his way to an unexpected career.

The task that begins as a lark proves an inspiration to the recent World War II veteran that he may have found a suitable occupation. Readers first met him in “ Devil in a Blue Dress” when he agrees to find a missing person. Walter Mosley’s private investigator Easy Rawlins has been around for nearly three decades now.

Charcoal joe by walter mosley