Book Review
Easy Rawlins in the time of the Watts riots

By Adam Woog
Special to The Seattle Times

Walter Mosley continues his Easy Rawlins tales with "Little Scarlet," set in Los Angeles in the summer of 1965.

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Walter Mosley's memorable and versatile writing has covered everything from science fiction and short stories to essays and straight-ahead novels. He's best known, though, as a mystery writer (Bill Clinton is famously a fan in this regard).

Of the characters Mosley has introduced over the years, none has proved sturdier than Easy Rawlins. "Little Scarlet" (Little, Brown, 320 pp., $24.95) is the eighth in this consistently rewarding series (ninth, if you count a story collection).

It's also the best: simple in its spare prose and streamlined plot; rich in its characters and thematic texture.

Ezekiel (Easy) Rawlins, the narrator, is a black man, a Los Angeles resident, a veteran and a house-proud wage-earner. While Easy may lack formal education, he's not lacking in intelligence, morality, dignity or compassion.

Easy has, over the years, gained two adopted children, a steady job as a janitor and a beloved sweetheart — and he's trying hard to do right by all of them.

Author appearance Walter Mosley will autograph "Little Scarlet" at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Seattle Mystery Bookshop, 117 Cherry St., Seattle, free (206-587-5737). He will read from "Little Scarlet" at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jackson Street Books, 2301 S. Jackson St., Seattle, free (206-324-7000), and at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Elliott Bay Book Co., 101 S. Main St., Seattle, free (206-624-6600 or www.elliottbaybooks.com).

Though he tries to live up to his nickname, the reality of Easy's life is anything but. All the guy wants to do is live a peaceful life, but he finds himself drawn time and again into danger as a reluctant, unlicensed and very unofficial private eye. Easy's good at this, because he has a knack for navigating the tricky no-man's-land that so often separates black and white.

Except for a prequel that filled in a chapter of Easy's youth, the series has moved chronologically forward. The first book, "Devil in a Blue Dress," found him readjusting to the harsh lights and deep shadows of civilian life in late 1940s California (a memorable 1995 film version starred Denzel Washington as Easy).

Subsequent books have dealt with rapidly changing times, with the series lately lingering in the nascent civil-rights era of the 1960s. Taken together, the books form an impressionistic portrait of race relations in America.

"Little Scarlet" is set during the tail end of a seminal event in Los Angeles' racial history: the Watts riots of the summer of 1965.

Amid the smoke and chaos, the police find murder: A beautiful black woman, nicknamed Little Scarlet for her reddish hair, has been strangled and shot in her apartment. A white man was seen running into her building to escape a mob of angry rioters. Did he kill her?

The cops need to find out fast to forestall more rioting, and they ask Easy to investigate. He can go places and ask questions they can't. Against his better judgment, Easy follows a trail that leads to — and then away from — the white man seen in the building.

Along the way, Easy asks his old friend Mouse — still mad, bad, dangerous to know and just maybe the most deadly man in Los Angeles — to help him out. (To do so, Mouse takes a breather from raking in dough by fencing items stolen by rioters.) Other supporting roles in this tale include a sly cameo by Paris Minton, the protagonist of Mosley's other regular series.

While hunting the killer, Easy has a chance to meditate on his own feelings about the riots. There's sadness at the senseless loss of life and property, of course, and fear at seeing so much pent-up anger released.

But there's also a giddy sense of elation. Easy realizes that there's been a turning point of some sort. He, as a black man, can do some things that were once forbidden: speak openly to a white woman, for instance, or relate to a policeman as an equal. In "Little Scarlet" and its mid-'60s setting, the times are changing fast for Easy Rawlins and America.

Seattle writer Adam Woog's column on mystery and crime fiction appears on the second Sunday

of the month in The Seattle Times.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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