Devil in A Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Apr. 18th, 2009 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreMost noir starts with a beautiful, mysterious woman walking into a jaded detective’s office. This starts with a white man in 1948 walking into a black bar and hiring Easy Rawlins, a war veteran who recently lost his job and is chafing under the social mores of the time, to find a white woman who recently disappeared on him. The case seems simple enough-find the woman, tell the man where to find her, get his money, and go home-but Easy finds himself getting involved in a series of double crosses and murders, until he has to get to the bottom of things or end up in jail himself.
Easy is an easy character to like, and his world weariness comes with the awareness that many of the problems he faces are caused by the color of his skin. He can take any level of hatred or mistreatment people throw at him, but he can’t take the disrespect he gets by default. In complete honesty, I couldn’t keep track of who killed and/or betrayed who and why, and I’m not even sure they were all revealed. I don’t really care that I couldn’t either. Mosley takes all the conventions of noir and filters them through the lens of someone getting every short stick society has, with amazingly effective results.
Easy is an easy character to like, and his world weariness comes with the awareness that many of the problems he faces are caused by the color of his skin. He can take any level of hatred or mistreatment people throw at him, but he can’t take the disrespect he gets by default. In complete honesty, I couldn’t keep track of who killed and/or betrayed who and why, and I’m not even sure they were all revealed. I don’t really care that I couldn’t either. Mosley takes all the conventions of noir and filters them through the lens of someone getting every short stick society has, with amazingly effective results.