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Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins #1)

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 6,766 ratings · 359 reviews

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs....

Paperback, 263 pages

Published September 24th 2002 by Washington Square Press (first published 1990)

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Apr 14, 2013 Carol rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of detective noir

Shelves: mystery, multi-culti

If you don't immediately start humming the song when you see this title, play it while you read. It is a classic:
http://youtu.be/KVbr37_yPeY

Easy Rawlins is just trying to get by. Laid off from his job building jets, he needs to make payment on his mortgage or face the loss of his house.
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Drowning his woes at a tiny bar above a meatpacking warehouse, his friend and bar owner Joppy hooks him up with DeWitt Albright. Easy can't help but notice that Joppy, an ex-heavyweight fighter, is nervous, a sur...more

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Feb 18, 2011 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-mystery, detectives, noir, 2011-r

Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins fought his way across Europe as a decorated soldier during World War II, but in post-war Los Angeles, he’s a second class citizen because he’s black. When Easy is fired from a good job due to racism from his boss, he finds himself on the verge of losing the small house he loves. A friend of Easy’s hooks him up with a white man named Albright who has an opportunity to make some quick cash.

Albright is looking for a white girl named Daphne Monet who is known to hang out in bl...more Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins fought his way across Europe as a decorated soldier during World War II, but in post-war Los Angeles, he’s a second class citizen because he’s black. When Easy is fired from a good job due to racism from his boss, he finds himself on the verge of losing the small house he loves. A friend of Easy’s hooks him up with a white man named Albright who has an opportunity to make some quick cash.

Albright is looking for a white girl named Daphne Monet who is known to hang out in black clubs. Since Albright won’t get any answers if he goes looking for her in those places, he wants Easy to find her and is offering $100 for a week’s work. That’s enough to pay his bills, and even though Albright makes Easy extremely nervous, he doesn’t see another way to keep his house.

Easy begins looking for Daphne, but he quickly finds himself the target of cops, rich white men and a dangerous hijacker. Fortunately for Easy, he has one of the staples of crime fiction in his corner; a Bad-Ass-Criminal-Friend. Raymond “Mouse” Alexander is a cheerful little psychopath who has a quick trigger finger and a nose for money, and he’s even more dangerous than the people Easy is already up against.

Mosley created a great character with Easy. In some ways, he’s an average everyman, just looking to get by during a time when his race makes him a frequent target so he doesn’t see the percentage in looking for extra trouble, but Easy also frequently gets fed up with the attitudes of the time and will demand respect when he feels he’s being slighted. He can also be extremely dangerous when pushed.

Since he isn’t a trained detective, Easy finds out what he needs by tapping the many relationships he has within the black community. You won’t find Easy dusting for fingerprints, but you may see him gossiping at the barber shop. Mosley did a superior job of recreating the world of Watts in 1948 and it’s a lot of fun to read about Easy moving through this environment.

Mouse is also a great twist on the classic Bad-Ass-Criminal-Friend concept you see in most detective books. Usually, the BACFs are loyal to their more law abiding friends and follow their lead when their services are called for. In this case, Easy is actually terrified of Mouse and with good reason. They may be old friends, but if Mouse sees an angle to make money, then he’d kill Easy or anyone else that stood in his way without a second thought. Dealing with Mouse is like handling nitroglycerin; it can be useful but if you’re not careful you’ll end up splattered all over the walls.

This was a great start to a good series. The movie version with Denzel Washington is also pretty good with a terrific performance by Don Cheadle as Mouse.
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Feb 16, 2012 G. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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Apr 26, 2008 Dfordoom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-mystery

Devil in a Blue Dress was Walter Mosley’s debut novel. It’s a private eye novel set in Los Angeles in 1948. What makes Devil in a Blue Dress different is that this private eye, Easy Rawlins, is black. In style and in feel it’s very close to Raymond Chandler, and it even follows Chandler in having a plot that is quite amazingly convoluted. Like Chandler Mosley is far more interested in character and in atmosphere than in merely telling a story. He doesn’t write as well as Chandler, but then very...more

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Sep 25, 2007 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fast-fun-and-fabulous

A fantastic noir-novel that tells a classic find-the-dame murder tale while tackling issues of race head on. Easy Rawlins inhabits the same late 40's L.A. that so many classic noir detective do, with one major difference: he's black. Mosley uses his character to explore the inherent racism underlying so many noir novels and, of course, America in general. The book never comes across as preachy, however, and is a perfect example of how a writer can weave a social charged message into a novel with...more

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Dec 07, 2010 Kirsty Darbyshire added it · review of another edition

I've got a three book omnibus of Walter Mosley's first three novels and on the back of enjoying this one I'm looking forward to spending time with the next two books. Though written in the 1990s about the late 1940s these books really conjure up a similar feeling to Chandler or Hammett's writing to me. I'm not an expert or even well read on either of those writers though I guess. That's definitely how this book felt to me though. The first person writing is lean and there's enough intrigue and m

...more

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Mar 28, 2009 Chuck rated it 4 of 5 stars

Any mystery novel set in Los Angeles is going to get compared to Raymond Chandler, although Chandler was just pretty much taking Carrol John Daly and transplanting him to LA. I mention this because--historical novel, LA, private eye, noir genre--comparisons to Chandler are natural. But those are surface similarities, genre similarities. In Devil and a Blue Dress, Walter Mosely is doing many new things, things that make it well worth reading.

First, if you've read any of these hard boiled detectiv...more Any mystery novel set in Los Angeles is going to get compared to Raymond Chandler, although Chandler was just pretty much taking Carrol John Daly and transplanting him to LA. I mention this because--historical novel, LA, private eye, noir genre--comparisons to Chandler are natural. But those are surface similarities, genre similarities. In Devil and a Blue Dress, Walter Mosely is doing many new things, things that make it well worth reading.

First, if you've read any of these hard boiled detective novels, you'll probably note that the main character is pretty static--already fully formed, wise cracking, morally centered on a personal code of contact, brave and resourceful. They don't change through the course of the novel, and, if there's a series, they don't change novel to novel. They are the western gunfighter, imposing order (through force) on a threating world, only the "range" they "ride" is the mean streets of an urban setting. This is true of Carrol John Daly's Race Williams, Dashiel Hammett's Sam Spade, Chandler's Philip Marlowe, and Robert B. Parker's Spenser (my favorite mystery sereis of all time).

But Easy Rawlins', Mosley's protagonist, is much more fully developed. He's a laid off aircraft worker trying to meet the mortgage on his home. He's from Houston and was part of the post-World War II migration of African Americans to to urban areas out of the South (the novel is set in 1948)--not a licensed private eye.

He is also fearful--of being killed by white cops, of some of his own friends, and of the fact that, even back then, someone minding his own business could be randomly killed in South LA. But he won't let himself be dominated by his fears, refusing to cower before powerful white men who try to force him into subservience, or to black men to whom violence is a casual companion. He faces the fears and does what he thinks is best regardless--being afraid and facing that fear is perhaps more brave than the bravado one sees in other hard-boiled detectives.

He is also unsure how to act. Whereas the other detective's unswerving moral code acts like a computer, spitting out the "right" answer, Easy has to think about what's going on, mull over decisions, and try and figure out what's "best." Often, there's no "good" answer, and he must choose between two bad choices and try and figure out which will do the least damage to the fewest people. Easy tries to do the right thing, but the world he lives in a far less clear cut than those of some other hard boiled detectives. He's also flawed and occassional makes mistakes, often when he's angry or tired--making him a character that more readers can relate to.

He also doesn't wise crack. It would not have been plausible for Easy to talk the way Philip Marlow (Chandler's here) did, smarting off to cops, teaking gangsters, baiting everyone. The social forces exerted on black men in 1948 were far different from those on white men (as they are today). That doesn't mean Easy isn't aumusing or that there isn't snappy dialogue (but a lot of it is internal, what he's thinking rather than what he says). I mention this because the "wise cracking private eye" is an expected part of the hard boiled genre, and this aspect of Easy's character is another way that the Easy Rawlins series isn't just another Chandler knock-off.
e
However, violence is the thing that makes the Easy series the most unique I've read. The private eye's world is always a dark, dangerous place, but it's largely violence that the private eye seeks out. But Easy's whole world is dangerous; he fled Houston because he was implicated in a murder a friend had committed; in the Today of the novel, men with guns and knives are a daily part of life.

Easy, however, doesn't carry a gun. With other private eyes, the gun is more than an accessory, it's a sidekick, a main character in the book. Race Williams always mentions his forty-four, and Spenser talks about dressing warm so his bullets won't get cold. But Easy doesn't "pack," and he only has a gun in his hand in one sequence in the novel. He also doesn't kill any one--most private eyes wind up shooting the bad buys. People get dead at the end of Devil in a Blue Dress, but it isn't easy who does the killing.

It's not becuase Easy is squeamish. He's a World War II vet who saw a great deal of combat; he's haunted at night by the faces of the men he's killed. But he doesn't carry a gun and, at least in the first novel in the series, he doesn't kill anyone (this is only the first I'v read, so I can't speak beyond it).

The African-American world of post-War Los Angeles. It's a mix of people from all over the country, all of whom have different reasons for having come to LA. It's a world of family men and working class people trying to get by, and of gangsters and hoods, and of white people who go into these neighborhoods for reasons that rarely benefit the people who live there.

Mosleys' writing is clear, engaging, and is rich in meaning while at the same time a "Fast read." I just read Parker's most recent Spenser novel a couple of weeks ago, and it dawned on me that one of the reasons I love those books is because Spenser, Hawk, and Susan never change--they are old friends I can count on. But the fact that Easy DOES change is the reason I LIKE Devil in a Blue Dress. Looks like I've made another 'friend.'(less)

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Apr 21, 2013 Lisa Hall rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the first Easy Rawlins book. Classic detective noir style set in L.A. in the late forties. Easy is an African American WWII veteran who moves from Houston Texas to California to make himself. He finds himself a good job, buys a house and settles in to live the American dream.

But that isn't so easy for a black man in the forties. Easy looses his job when he turns down an extra shift at the plant. His mortgage is due and he doesn't know how he's gonna pay it so when his friend gives him th...more

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Nov 28, 2012 Howard McEwen rated it 5 of 5 stars

What is it about bright, sunny Los Angeles that makes it the perfect setting for noir?

Chandler’s stories were set in L.A. So were James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. Films, too. Sunset Blvd., Chinatown and L.A. Confidential off the top of my head.

Does it work so well because it shows the contrast between the light of the environment and the darkness that we sometimes see in the human soul?

Maybe.

If so, Walter Mosley heightened that contrast by bringing black detec...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Booknblues rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, mystery

It sounded like a deal that was too good to pass up to Easy Rawlins an African-American veteran of WWII who had just lost his job. All he had to do was hang out at jazz clubs and find a blond woman who was a friend to Mr. Albright and he would earn enough money to make his mortgage payment.
Easy soon finds out that easy money is never easy! Before long it seems that Easy has met the blond, had a little interview with the police, has uncovered a few corpses and is in fear for his life.

Walter Mosle...more

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Mar 03, 2012 David Carr rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-crime-fiction

The sure voice of Easy Rawlins allows us to see the searcher as a person of methodical edginess, asking questions that probe and invite but do not invade or disrespect. As a black veteran in postwar Los Angeles, he is an artful gymnast always on shaky ground, trying to remain human while maintaining the uneasy balance of a job, a home, and experiences with the depravities of white and black cultures. His treasured house is his anchor; the dissonances of war remain consequential and ambiguous, bu...more

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Jul 19, 2011 Riccarla Roman rated it 4 of 5 stars

I first read this book when it came out in 1990 and it started me as a fan of Walter Mosley's mysteries. I just reread the book for one of my book groups.

It was great to revisit Easy Rawlins as we first met him. It's after WWII and Easy has just lost his job for an airplane manufacturing plant. A friend of his sets him with a job looking for a girl. His employer in this adventure is a ruthless white man who wants Easy to search for a white girl who frequents places that white men can't easily go...more

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Jul 08, 2012 Megan Baxter rated it 4 of 5 stars

Devil in a Blue Dress is an excellent hard-boiled mystery. It is also a fascinating examination of race and masculinities in late-1940s Los Angeles. That it manages to do both these things at the same time, seamlessly, is little short of breathtaking.

"Easy" Rawlins had just been fired from his job for not taking on extra hours when he was exhausted, when the local bartender offers him a chance at some easy money - enough for at least one month's payment on his mortgage. So he takes it on, tryin...more Devil in a Blue Dress is an excellent hard-boiled mystery. It is also a fascinating examination of race and masculinities in late-1940s Los Angeles. That it manages to do both these things at the same time, seamlessly, is little short of breathtaking.

"Easy" Rawlins had just been fired from his job for not taking on extra hours when he was exhausted, when the local bartender offers him a chance at some easy money - enough for at least one month's payment on his mortgage. So he takes it on, trying to find a vanished blonde for a local bigwig, with a cold-eyed gangster as go-between. Along the way, bodies start to pile up, and Easy gets the feeling that he might be next. So he calls his psychopathic friend Mouse and asks for help - or hindrance, as the case may be. The blonde comes in and out of his life like a breath of perfume.

This is the story of how Easy became a private detective, which he certainly is not at the beginning of the story. He makes missteps, accidental good moves, stays silent, refuses to knuckle under, and at the end, decides this private detective business might just be for him, after all. No boss to answer to, anyway.

Devil in a Blue Dress is acute about racism, and the varieties that Easy runs into along the way, from outright violence to condescension to disbelief that Easy won't do exactly as he's told to the hidden racism of a confiding rich man. The web that this weaves around him is ever present, and yet, through that, Easy defines himself by his own masculinity, by the voice in the back of his head that tells him what he needs to do to both survive and to continue to think of himself as a man. He'll let things slide, but he won't bend his knee, and his negotiation and assessment of different circumstances are fascinating.

Most good noir has something the private dick can't walk away from. In the Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade has to do something about the death of his partner. For Easy, it's his property, the land he owns, and which he will not leave behind. The symbolic importance of property to Easy was both convincing and gripping.(less)

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Jul 13, 2009 Bettie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fraudio, published-1992, mystery-thriller

Now to watch the film, it's cued up on the player so it's feet up with popcorn time. Whee!

Walter Mosley's thriller, read by Paul Winfield.

Devil in a Blue Dress is a 1990 hardboiled mystery novel by Walter Mosley, the first of his mystery novels featuring Easy Rawlins, a black private detective in post-World War II Southern California.

The novel addresses issues of race and gender, as well as the post-war condition of black Americans. The plot follows Rawlins as he has been hired to find a woman w...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Cathy DuPont rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Noir and hard boiled genre lovers

This was a great book however, due to circumstances beyond my control; I read it in short time sequences and spurts. I hate to read books that way. I like to read two hours or more at each sitting but it didn’t happen here but it’s not going to reflect the four stars I gave it.

And certainly, the ending, that in itself deserves the fourth star.

This was a first time effort for Walter Mosley in 1990 who is now an established and well respected author.

His protagonist, Easy (Ezekiel) Rawlins is such...more

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May 04, 2010 Milo King rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mysteries, historical, african-american

Mosley's first Easy Rawlins mystery (and first novel) is drenched in the details and sensibilities of its period setting - 1948 Los Angeles (Watts & environs). You can almost smell the heat and sweat in the dive bars, cramped apartments, clapboard houses, and LAPD interrogation rooms where a young, traumatized and wary WWII vet - Easy Rawlins – agrees to some quick cash in exchange for some amateur detective work. Within hours he becomes more and more deeply entangled in a web of lies, jilte...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Lori rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed, audios, 2011challenge, mysteries, historical

Definitely in the same vein as Chandler and Hammett, Mosley's Easy Rawlins is a man who finds life anything but easy.

For the first time in his life, he has something that's truly his (a house) of which he rightly proud. Unfortunately, he just lost his job and has a mortgage payment due, he doesn't have much choice in jobs, so, when one practically falls in his lap, he takes it on. In the process of searching for one Daphne Monet, Easy finds himself coming up such characters as Dewitt Albright, a...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Johnsergeant rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiblecom, audiobook, black-american-lit, thriller

Narrated by Michael Boatman

5 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's Summary

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

©2002 Walter Mosley; (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

What the Critics Say

Audie Award Winner, Mystery and Suspense,...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Ensiform rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, mystery

Easy Rawlins, an unemployed black war vet living in Los Angeles in 1948, is approached by a dangerous man and asked to find a beautiful white girl. He accepts the job reluctantly and starts asking around in seedy, dangerous bars as well as the corporate offices of white businessmen. Easy’s no detective or killer, and he’s soon tangled up in a very confusing series of plots and counterplots, as several of his friends and enemies are killed.

The mystery is a bit too convoluted for my tastes --- lot...more

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Oct 12, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book because it didn't pull any punches and showed the realism of racist LA in the 40's, and because it is so refreshing to have the plot center around the African American community, and an African American protagonist. This book proves that even when white men are pulling most/all of the strings, the most interesting/important story may still be what goes on in the lives of those people whose strings are being pulled.

I enjoyed the observations and philosophizing from Easy Rawlins...more

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Feb 28, 2009 Lee rated it 5 of 5 stars

While the Easy Rawlins series could easily be dismissed as simple detective fiction it transcends, for me, such simple classification. Walter Mosley, in the spirit of Chester Himes shows the inequality that individuals face in America (and the world really) if they are seen as liminal. Easy Rawlins must rely on the relationships he has acquired as an African-American transplant from Texas to Los Angeles do his work. Relationships are often strained as a result and trouble arises not just from as...more

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Jul 08, 2010 ICPL Staff Picks added it

Shelves: staff-picks-blog, mysteries, brian

Devil in a Blue Dress is Walter Mosley’s first Easy Rawlins mystery. Easy is a black, World War II veteran living in the Watts area of Los Angeles in the 40’s. When we first meet Easy, he’s out of work and worried about losing his house. He’s offered a job by a white man to find a girl. That’s all he has to do, find her. Things, obviously, get more complicated as Easy tries to figure out who wants to find this girl and why.

Devil is in the hard-boiled tradition with a lone detective working his w...more

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May 21, 2011 Julie Hayes rated it 5 of 5 stars

The time is 1948 and the setting is Los Angeles. Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is newly unemployed and in need of cash when DeWitt Albright strolls casually into Joppy’s small meat-scented bar. Easy is surprised, not just because Albright is white, but because of his dress. Easy has a funny feeling about the man, which is only accentuated when Joppy introduces him, explaining that Easy’s in need of money. Fortuitously, the white man needs someone to do something for him, something which will earn him s...more The time is 1948 and the setting is Los Angeles. Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is newly unemployed and in need of cash when DeWitt Albright strolls casually into Joppy’s small meat-scented bar. Easy is surprised, not just because Albright is white, but because of his dress. Easy has a funny feeling about the man, which is only accentuated when Joppy introduces him, explaining that Easy’s in need of money. Fortuitously, the white man needs someone to do something for him, something which will earn him some easy cash. Albright gives Easy his card and says he should look him up.

The address on the card is far from Watts, but Easy goes anyway to check out the situation, ‘cause he needs the money. Joppy’s right about what Albright wants—he’s looking for someone. A girl. A white girl, to be more precise, by the name of Daphne Monet. Easy is suspicious about why he’s being asked to do this when surely there are other people who could do the job, such as the police. He’s told that Daphne has a certain predilection for “jazz and pigs’ feet and the company of Negroes”. In other words, she’s probably somewhere that Easy will have easier access to than most. Such as an illegal bar called John’s.

Easy takes the man’s money because of necessity, and begins his quest to find Miss Monet. Albright claims that his own client, the one that is seeking Daphne, only wishes her well, he means her no harm, because he loves her. Well, that’s gotta do for now, as Easy doesn’t have any better answers, or any reason to doubt him. Yet.

The search for Daphne Monet leads Easy into situations he hasn’t bargained for, involving both friends and acquaintances and strangers. People are starting to turn up dead, and Easy finds himself hauled in by the police for questioning, although he’s never told why or what it’s about. Being a black man in 1940’s LA means they can pretty well treat him like dirt and get away with it.

The icing on the cake is Daphne Monet herself. When she enters the picture, will Easy ever be able to think straight again? Will it cost him his life?

This is the first book in the Easy Rawlins mystery series, and it’s a splendid introduction to Mosley’s detective. It’s a great beginning. Mosley has a very easy, smooth style, which flows like a fine piece of jazz. Easy is a complex character and we learn a lot about him in this book, both from his actions as well as his thoughts. Besides Easy, there is a supporting cast of characters who are as interesting as he is. His search for the elusive Miss Monet takes him into the seamy darker side of LA, with twists and turns that will leave you guessing until the end who did what and why. Besides Easy, one of my favorite characters is his best friend Mouse.

I know that there’s a movie, but I haven’t seen it. Having read the book, though, I’ll probably check it out. I usually find it’s better to read the source material first, then you can deal with what changes are wrought on the silver screen.

I recommend Devil in a Blue Dress if you enjoy mysteries. Easy Rawlins is an engaging character, one that’s sure to linger with you, even after you’ve turned the last page.

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Oct 27, 2010 David Guy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book when it first came out. Then more recently, a friend lent me Mosley's Fortunate Son, which I really enjoyed, and I had a brief period of reading a lot of Mosley and reading about him. One of the things I read was that the Easy Rawlins mysteries presented a portrait of African American life in the forties and fifties, and that sounded quite interesting to me.

So I read this book again, interested not so much in the mystery--which is never what I'm looking for--as the atmosphere, a...more

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Mar 02, 2009 Hank Mishkoff rated it 3 of 5 stars

Is it fair to criticize a book because it's not as good as the movie that was based on the book? After all, if the filmmakers didn't have the book as source material, there wouldn't have been a move at all.

But having said that, I have to tell you that I was disappointed in "Devil" because it wasn't nearly as good as the film and I find that I'm unable to unlink them in my mind.

The book is good, interesting to read, fast paced. But although the same characters appear in both media, the characters...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Tara rated it 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book well enough, though it's not really my style of book. I'm not a huge fan of the "hard nosed detective takes on the mean streets of the city" style of book, with a hero that's jumping into the sack with every woman he meets, when he's not running from crooks and killers, or from crooked cops that like to use their fists too much. It's all a little too male-fantasy for me.

But this was an easy read, well-paced, descriptive, with a pretty likeable hero and a cast of other interes...more

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May 13, 2012 Jonathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Remember how I said I was on a Walter Mosley kick? Well this is final leg of that bender—Mosley’s very first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress. It’s not as good as some of his other works, but can you blame him? It was only his first published novel, and he wrote it 22 years ago. There was bound to be some improvement between then and now. That being said, Devil in a Blue Dress is a far cry from being a bad novel. Hell, it’s a far cry from being an O.K. novel. It’s really good—just not the five star...more Remember how I said I was on a Walter Mosley kick? Well this is final leg of that bender—Mosley’s very first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress. It’s not as good as some of his other works, but can you blame him? It was only his first published novel, and he wrote it 22 years ago. There was bound to be some improvement between then and now. That being said, Devil in a Blue Dress is a far cry from being a bad novel. Hell, it’s a far cry from being an O.K. novel. It’s really good—just not the five star variety of good. You dig?

Good. Now let me tell you a little something-something about the plot.

Easy Rawlins is a black man living in 1948 Los Angeles. He fought with Patton’s 7th Army during WWII and now works as a machinist for an aircraft assembly plant. At the beginning of the novel, however, he has just been fired from his job. While sitting in his friend Joppy’s bar—drowning his sorrows, no doubt—he is approached by a white man named Dewitt Albright. Albright is a mean cuss if there ever was one, a grinning shark of a gangster who offers Easy $100 to find a white woman named Daphne Monet (the titular “Devil in a Blue Dress). Daphne likes “dark meat,” and Albright needs someone with connections to the black community in order to find her and whoever she’s shacking up with. As it turns out, Albright’s employer is in love with Daphne, and only wants to talk to her to beg her to come back—but she also stole $30,000 from the man when she ran off, and Albright wants that money. Easy doesn’t find out about all that until much later, but never mind that.

When he starts looking around for Daphne, people start getting killed. It’s not a good Noir mystery unless at least three people get the axe, and Devil in a Blue Dress is no exception. First to die is a man named Howard Green, the chauffer of a wealthy politico, then Easy’s friend Coretta James who supposedly knew the wayward white girl. A pimp of under-aged boys and a rich pedophile also bite the dust, but that’s really more of a cause for celebration than anything else. Confused yet? I don’t blame you. You really have to read the book to get it all. It doesn’t matter, though, because the main point is that a bunch of people die, and the police set their sights upon Easy. They sweat him, beat him, and generally make his life miserable several times throughout the novel as they try to get him to tell them what he knows. He doesn’t, of course. He’s a tough sonofabitch, after all. But once out, Rawlins begins his own investigation to find the murders, find Daphne, and unravel the mystery that surrounds “this Devil in a Blue Dress.” What evolves is a twisted maze of sex, murder, and greed that Easy barely escapes with his life—in short, everything that makes Noir awesome.

If any author could be called the heir to Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald, it has to be Mosley. Devil in a Blue Dress has all the formulaic elements that made their novels great—first person narration, an honorable, hard-nosed P.I., grim worldview, and plot that marries both the wealthy and the down and out in their common iniquities. But Mosley’s work differs in two key aspects. First, there’s the African American perspective, which necessarily changes some of the elements of the story (like the focus on the Black community and the use of vernacular for much of the narrative) and adds others that the originals lacked (like racism and race-relations). Second, Mosley introduces “The Voice,” a viciously primal split personality that appears within his protagonist whenever he runs into a dangerous situation. The Voice tells him how to escape such a situation with level-headed advice such as “Kill that son’bitch!” or “Grab that there rock and bash his face in!” The jury is still out over The Voice—I can’t decide if it was pure genius or a tad on the hokey side. I’m leaning toward the latter, but I don’t know. I’ll make up my mind when I read the next book in the series.

That being said, Devil in a Blue Dress is simply not on the same level as the greats like The Drowning Pool or The Big Sleep. Then again, I don’t think anyone ever expected it to be. It was Mosley’s first book, after all. But if you happen to like the work of the rest of the noir and hardboiled elite, I encourage you to give Mosley a try. You don’t have to start at the beginning with Devil in a Blue Dress (I certainly didn’t), but if you do, you’ll be amazed at Mosley’s transformation as a writer over the years. He’s come a long way—from a talented imitator, to a master in his own right.

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Jun 17, 2009 Ross Burton rated it 5 of 5 stars

The power and precision of the writing is what first won me over - there's a bit when a white man, DeWitt Allbright, walks in to a black bar; he walks in, stands just inside the door, Mosley writes "...he had all the time in the world" and with these words you can sense, understand the moment and almost experience it yourself.

As a series of books, the Easy Rawlins novels are a complex of Californian tragedies and have no equal, to my mind, in charting the descent of ane man into a dark place in...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Lora rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, favorites

This was a re-read for me - I read the book years ago and remember it as being a super-terrific-wonderful read. I thought it was so good that I chose it for my World Book Night book. And since I got chosen as a book-giver-away this year I thought I'd better re-read it so I could talk about it. Yup, I was right. It's a super-terrific-wonderful read. It's darn near a perfect book, thank you Mr. Mosely. I heard a lecture by Nancy Pearl a while ago and she said that people read for one of three reas...more

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Aug 20, 2010 Tim Pendry rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, north-american, popular-culture

This is, to all intents and purposes, a Raymond Chandler novel written by a black American and herein lies a problem - do you give a book stars because of its literary merit or because it is sociologically or culturally important?

I go for literary merit in general and, though Mosley writes crisply with a fine ear for black dialect, there is none of the poetic magic of Chandler who defined an era by being there and not through observing it forty years on.

Sociologically and culturally though, it i...more This is, to all intents and purposes, a Raymond Chandler novel written by a black American and herein lies a problem - do you give a book stars because of its literary merit or because it is sociologically or culturally important?

I go for literary merit in general and, though Mosley writes crisply with a fine ear for black dialect, there is none of the poetic magic of Chandler who defined an era by being there and not through observing it forty years on.

Sociologically and culturally though, it is an important book. Easy Rawlins might be, on the surface, just a dark skinned migrant version of Philip Marlowe, but the black experience of America has to be told and a reliance on 'Roots' is not going to be enough if white Americans are to understand the perspective of others who call themselves by the same name of 'American' but who have a very different historical experience.

Sadly, Americans go too far in thinking the experiences of Easy Rawlins to be peculiarly black - peasants, working class people and other migrants of every colour have much the same experience as Easy because the issues are about class and power and not colour of skin. An accident of history and 'black' potentates would have enslaved 'white' people as the North African slavers did long before the main Atlantic slave trade emerged.

As someone of working class stock who got a top notch education through the welfare state in its prime, I can testify to the discomfort a young man feels when introduced to a world of codes designed to turn him into something he is not. I can also testify to the ability of those who have a stake in the system to bully those who have not simply because of where they stand in the game of power - how much worse it was for people who, in an otherwise free society, could be marked out at thirty paces before they had even opened their mouth.

Still, Mosley is not here to talk about history in the round but to write of the specific experience of blacks in 1940s California, those who migrated from the pauper American South to get jobs in the burgeoning military-industrial complex where labour demands based on fat Cold War government contracts required willing and easily replaced low wage but skilled workers(as in the auto industry of Detroit).

Where Mosley does score, beyond the intricately plotted but fairly standard Chandleresque crime story, is in reproducing the psychological bullying that underpinned white dominance of black culture, where half the job of social control was being done by the black community itself who had little choice in the matter.

Black Americans seem to have adopted an uneasy combination of isolationist quasi-criminality alongside a troubled determination to keep their heads down in an attempt to find solace in a small degree of prosperity and respectability. The character of Easy Rawlins is designed to show how difficult it was to avoid straddling these two worlds - which helpfully gives him a stronger back drop for his troubled internal morality than the existentialist Mr. Marlowe.

Neither mode of social being, criminality or respectability, had blacks (not African Americans at this stage in history but 'blacks') seeking to be noticed by whites in this period so the criminals preyed on their own rather than bring down the sledgehammer of white policing, while respectable souls were forced into compromises with their integrity to avoid contact with a culture whose power was far more arbitrary than it should have been according to its own standards.

The roots of aggressive black pride and criminal defiance that emerged later in the 1970s were sown in the 1940s. Bluntly, observing the treatment of black Americans in the book, whitey really had it coming to him ...

This is why Mosley is worth reading - not for the jolly crime novel aspect (though that is entertaining enough) but the accumulating insight into a culture of anxiety and fear which, to his great credit, Mosley does not over-play. The book is the more effective for being understated and, to his credit, any temptation to grandstand that might have arisen amongst angry lesser minds is firmly resisted.
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About Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley (born January 12, 1952) is a prominent American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction.

Mosley has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles; it is perhaps his most popular work.

Mosley has written over 20 bo...more

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Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins #1)

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