— Mystery & Crime —
Devil in a Blue Dress
Walter Mosley
— 1990 —
“
Easy Rawlins, a Black working man in 1940s Los Angeles, becomes an accidental detective hired to find a white woman in Black neighborhoods where the police won't go.
Decide its fate
⚖The case for it
Yes, the mystery loosens its grip well before the finish, and readers who want every thread pulled tight will feel cheated. What holds instead is money: Easy has lost his factory job, the mortgage won't wait, so he takes work he knows better than to touch. Dread over losing the house drives these chapters more forcefully than any secret could. Mosley is writing about 1948, about what a Black veteran in Los Angeles had to risk simply to keep a roof and stay unbothered in his own neighborhood.
— the honest librarian
✕The case against
Mosley inherited Chandler's plotting along with his form, which means the conspiracy stops adding up about two-thirds in and you ride voice the rest of the way. Daphne herself is more device than woman, a noir prize updated but still standing where the trope always stood. Mouse steals the book; that is also a problem.
— the honest librarian
beyond the verdict
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