Devil in A Blue Dress by Walter Mosley

[meganbmoore]

Most 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.

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yup! Though I haven't seen it. Denzel Washington implies good things, though.

[melonfusion.livejournal.com]

I totally recommend the movie! I haven't read the book, so there might be some translation issues, but I thought the movie was great. One of the very rare instances when Denzel Washington gets to be funny.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

It has been years since I saw the movie or read the book, but I saw it when my memories of the book were much fresher and liked it a great deal, although I recall that it had the usual book-to-movie adaptation issues of some plot elements needing to be simplified/condensed/eliminated for reasons of length. (In particular, I vaguely want to say that I think there was less screen time for Mouse, who I found one of the most fascinating characters in the book.) And the casting of Jennifer Beals as the title character was particularly apt for spoilerific reasons.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I've been wondering about casting Jennifer Beals for the same reason. I'm not sure i've seen her in anything, and can't draw a picture to mind ATM.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I think early-80s hit "Flashdance" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashdance) is probably the film she's still best-known for, although her biggest role in recent years was as one of the main characters in the first six seasons of The L Word. Folks who haven't seen the movie or read the book and don't want to risk spoilers shouldn't look her up on IMDB, Wiki, etc., though, as that may help connect the dots to figure out what the big twist about Daphne Monet is going to be.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh, and here's how she looks in the film's 1940s glam instead of early-80's big-hair-and-ripped-sweatshirt style:



And a grainier pic of Daphne with Easy:



Mmmmm, Denzel.