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 ho...
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Feb 23, 2011
Kemper
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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 More...
Albright is looking for a white girl named Daphne Monet who is known to More...
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Apr 26, 2008
Dfordoom
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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 v
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Sep 25, 2007
Chris
rated it:
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
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Dec 07, 2010
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 a
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Mar 28, 2009
Chuck
rated it:
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 More...
First, if you've read any of these hard More...
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Jul 19, 2011
Riccarla
rated it:
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 More...
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 More...
Jul 13, 2009
Bettie
rated it:
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 More...
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 More...
May 04, 2010
Milo
rated it: 
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, jilted lo
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Jul 31, 2011
Lori
rated it:
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 A More...
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 A More...
Feb 28, 2009
Lee
rated it:
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
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Jul 17, 2010
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 w More...
Devil is in the hard-boiled tradition with a lone detective w More...
May 21, 2011
Julie
rated it:
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
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Oct 27, 2010
David
rated it:
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 More...
So I read this book again, interested not so much in the mystery--which is never what I'm looking for--as the More...
Mar 02, 2009
Hank
rated it:
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 ap More...
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 ap More...
Jun 17, 2009
Ross
rated it:
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 ma More...
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 ma More...
Sep 14, 2010
Tim
rated it:
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 More...
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 More...
Apr 24, 2010
Kaye
rated it:
Easy Rawlins is an African-American veteran in 1948. He's seen plenty of battle, and wants a peaceful life. He loses his crummy factory job, and when his ability to pay the mortgage is threatened, he starts working for some shady characters. Of course, they turn out to be a lot shadier than he bargained for, and soon he is being hunted himself. I liked the writing a lot, but the mystery itself wasn't that fun for me due to a general lack of resolution. Some things definitely stayed mysterio
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Aug 06, 2011
Sandie
rated it:
An Easy Rawlins mystery and something totally different from the ones I have been reading. I had already read Black Betty and liked it. Set in Los Angeles in the late 40s. Easy, a black war veteran, has just been laid off from his job and is wondering how he is going to pay his mortgage. He stumbles into his detective work when a strange evil white man comes into the bar. He then begins a search for the woman in the blue dress. The characters are memorable and well drawn and the plot move
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Mar 03, 2009
Frank
rated it:
This book introduces Mosley's Easy Rawlins, one of the best fictional - what do I call him: Detective? Fixer? Knight? Guy mixed up in a whole lotta stuff not his own doing? I would put him in the same league as Travis Magee or Doc Ford - guys who do sometimes quixotic work to help people (and, sometimes do it for money, too). This series really gives insight into the African American experience during the 40s through the 60s - Mosley has the character age and change over time, an enjoyable c
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Dec 07, 2011
Seebany
rated it:
Walked to the library 40 weeks pregnant to unsuccessfully induce labor. When I couldn't find any of the humor books I'd been looking for, I tracked down this African-American author of Sam-Spade-type mysteries. There's a whole series of novels around the detective Easy Rawlins in post WWII LA, and he's got such a distinctive voice you can hear it in your head as you read. The genre is sort of film noir meets The Wire. A lot of sordid goings-on in the book, so may not be for the squeamish. W
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Dec 29, 2011
Tfitoby
rated it:
Raymond Chandler could probably be called the Grand Master of this style of genre fiction, his style and content leading the way for many pale imitators to follow. Walter Mosley's first Easy Rawlins book is perhaps better than any Chandler I've read.
I think the true test for me is the dialogue and there were times when I was imagining Bogart as Marlowe reading the part of Easy; surely there can be no higher praise for this genre?
What Mosley does better is to add the extra lay More...
I think the true test for me is the dialogue and there were times when I was imagining Bogart as Marlowe reading the part of Easy; surely there can be no higher praise for this genre?
What Mosley does better is to add the extra lay More...
May 14, 2010
Carr3ie
rated it: 
Read Fortunate Son years and years ago. Maybe it was high school, so it wasn't that long ago after all. It's a great book.
John brought Devil home from the Library! the other day. It was a quick, engaging read. A recently unemployed Black man (that's important -- it's 1938, he's a war vet, and he wants to be respected) gets paid by a shady character to find the missing girl, and murder and mayhem follow. I'll probably read a few more of Walter Mosley's offerings to see if our hero fi More...
John brought Devil home from the Library! the other day. It was a quick, engaging read. A recently unemployed Black man (that's important -- it's 1938, he's a war vet, and he wants to be respected) gets paid by a shady character to find the missing girl, and murder and mayhem follow. I'll probably read a few more of Walter Mosley's offerings to see if our hero fi More...
May 13, 2011
Harmonybites
rated it:
Mosley is notably in the hard-boiled detective tradition. His "Easy" Rawlins is a black war veteran in 1948 Los Angeles, and there's plenty of dark, gritty atmosphere, beautiful women of doubtful virtue, corrupt cops and danger down every corner and a strong first person voice. Mosley can boast a smooth prose style with deft and evocative imagery.
Oh, and his protagonist is a bigot who says he hates white people, who calls his boss at the factory "a slaver" and who w More...
Oh, and his protagonist is a bigot who says he hates white people, who calls his boss at the factory "a slaver" and who w More...
Aug 08, 2010
Ari
rated it:
I finished this book feeling dazed. Not confused, but dazed. I knew the basics of what was going on, but I never could guess who did what and why they did it. There isn't a lot going on this novel, but everyone spins lies with ease (heehee, sorry). It doesn't help that Easy is a flawed main character and while I love him for it, it does make the narrative a bit frustrating. He gets distracted by liquor and women a few times. I really liked Easy because of how reacted to some dangerous situations
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Aug 07, 2008
Dale
rated it:
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Jan 29, 2008
Guy
rated it:
Devil In A Blue Dress (1990) van Walter Mosley. Waarschijnlijk is dit z’n bekendste boek, al zal dat vooral het gevolg zijn van de (middelmatige) erop gebaseerde film met Denzel Washington van een paar jaar later. Nochtans is dit debuut wel degelijk de moeite, al valt het bezwaarlijk innoverend of opwindend te noemen. Mosley neemt plaats in een traditie van hard-boiled crime fiction, en sluit zowel stilistisch als met een heel pak thematische motieven (een verdwijning, een femme fatale, rokerige
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Dec 22, 2010
I love the series and the character of Easy Rawlins. I think that Easy is a person we can all relate to; he is trying to better his life and those he cares about,but he does not always go about it in what most would consider the right way. I love that even though easy does not consider himself the good guy he is, and the different types of people he runs into prove it. I have read all of the Easy series over and over.Must reads!
Nov 14, 2008
Ryan
rated it:
I was excited to check out this beloved series. Parts of it are great--the setting, the time period, Easy Rawlins way of helping people in the community with difficult problems, the clear-eyed view of the racism and brutality of cops. The mystery, here, though relies on inexplicable actions by a femme fatale. I know, they don't need reasons, their just sexist props for the male detective to have his ego bruised against, but still...female detective authors can write realistic male characters so
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Sep 03, 2011
Eyna
rated it:
A black man laid off from his job, and is going to lose his home,
would do anything to make his mortgage -- White man in a white suit
came along, offered this black man some money just to find a blonde.
Simple enough. But of course, nothing is ever as it seems.
Easy gets easy money for a seemingly easy job.
Turned out, there's no easy way out.
Life for Easy is not easy at all.
Its a page-turning book of perilous drama & action.
would do anything to make his mortgage -- White man in a white suit
came along, offered this black man some money just to find a blonde.
Simple enough. But of course, nothing is ever as it seems.
Easy gets easy money for a seemingly easy job.
Turned out, there's no easy way out.
Life for Easy is not easy at all.
Its a page-turning book of perilous drama & action.
Feb 18, 2011
Dianne
rated it:
Set in 1948 Los Angeles, out of work black war veteran Easy Rawlins accepts an assignment to find Daphne Monet, a blonde torch singer. Los Angeles was not an easy town for a black at this time, and the strength of this novel is its strong sense of place and culture - fear, racial tension, sleaze and violence. Easy Rawlins is a likeable protagonist.
I rate Walter Mosley's novels highly.
I rate Walter Mosley's novels highly.
