Walter Mosley is one of my top favorite writers and Easy Rawlins is one of my top favorite characters in literature. In my mind, I’ve been reading them forever, but I see that it has “only” been since sometime after the 1990 hardback of Devil in a Blue dress was isssued in paperback. ,While any Mosley book has much to offer as a standalone, reading them in order will give any newbie a much richer experieince. Even if details have become hazy over the 35 years Mosely has been writing Easy stories, the way I feel about familiar characters matters when they show up. However, one of the lovliest things Mosely did for us in this book is to give us the kind of literary preface that one usually sees in a posthumous reprinting of an old classic. He shares with us how Easy became a character whose stories are “kind of like a 20th Century memoir, a fast-paced unspooling of events that came from a people, an entire so-called race, that had been fighting for liberation and equality longer than any living soul could remember.” He puts into words what we all know about Easy instinctively, that who he seems to be and the extensive value system he has developed that one might think is predictable is not who Easy is. Mosely describes him as “possibly the most dangerous character you’ll ever meet. When you see Easy you think you understand him, but, in reality, he is always something else. He is the truth-seeker who most people do not suspect of such a grandiose purpose. They see a Black man, a man who has been beaten so often that he could never pose a threat that is not immediate and physical. They have no idea that Easy has learned how to open any door, either physical or conceptual.”
Gray Dawn takes place in 1970s Los Angeles. Easly lives on a compound owned by a wealthy benefactor, with security provided by an old Sicilian man and his sons, now friends to Easy. He’s feeling down as his daughter is in Europe and his son, daughter in law and grandchild have been busy. He doesn’t have to work anymore, but the old security guy tells him to get himself to the office, And so we go into the City and away from his rarified home where he meets a rather unsavory client who insists that Easy has to find his mother, Lutisha James and tell her to call her mother, the client’s grandmother. As is usual, Easy should possibly gone with his instincts to turn this one away, but he dives in, finding it neceessary to involve a number of his familiar friends,, associates and frenemies. Lutisha does not want to be found. But a couple of facts about her lets Easy follow days and hours behind her, on one occasion finding a very problematic scene in what was meant to be a safe place for her. As the blurb from the publisher shares, she goes by another name as well that Easy will recognize and has a secret that will upend Easy’s own life.
Easy’s work life is shifting as he is training up his receptionist to be a detective and he supervises her in her first case, which is an amusing and very recognizable learning experience for her. It being the 70s, he is working on dealing with the idea that women can and should be doing this work, not in a misogynistic way but in an Easy way, reflecting on and accepting change.
Running parrallel to this story is a problem that Easy’s son Jesus and daughter in law Benita face. They are in serious trouble and turn out to be in hiding. Pride and some shame about the situation meant they avoided seeking help from Easy. When he tracks them down, they accept his complex plan to address their problm in a larger than life manner that lets us see how Easy plans a major piece of work requiring many moving parts and many people.
I thoroughly enjoy Mosleys narrative style and his many characters, well -developed overthe years and now brought to us as the complex, experienced people we’ve come to root for and love —even Mouse. Go for it!
They Called me Bookworm 