Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley

[rachelmanija]

The classic noir beginning is, "A gorgeous dame walked into my office..." This one begins with a white man walking into a bar. That beginning signals both that the world of the novel isn't the usual white one... and that the job the white man offers will be just as tangled and deceptive as the one offered by the usual dame.

A modern classic noir, complete with cynical detective, femme fatale, excellent prose, and a beautifully depicted 1948 Los Angeles in which the sun always shines and corruption and violence lurk around every corner.

The detective is black WWII vet Easy Rawlins, here embarking on his very first case. He's young but not innocent; the war and life as a black man in a white folks' world took care of that. But he does have a mortgage to pay...

One of my very favorite things about this novel was Mosley's way with genre conventions as refracted through a non-white perspective. The usual unmarked-white world of noir becomes unmarked-black. In a moment that's hilarious if you've read enough old racist mysteries in which the hero thinks something like, "That's the third time a Chinaman has been mentioned in relation to the murder - something is up!" Rawlins becomes suspicious when white people keep turning up. And the social evil in this novel is not the general miasma of corruption of Dashiell Hammett or the family dysfunction of Ross MacDonald, but racism.

I don't think I ever fully understood why everyone was killing everyone else or who all had double-crossed each other, but the extreme complexity of the plot is also classic noir. (Supposedly in some Hammett novel, the author himself couldn't tell who committed one of the murders.) But I don't read noir for plot, but for atmosphere, character, and prose. All three are fantastic here. As a bonus, it's a lot less misogynist than most noir, and not all the women who have sex end up dead.

Thanks to the_red_shoes for the rec!

Buy it from Amazon: Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins Mysteries)

Comments

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

(Supposedly in some Hammett novel, the author himself couldn't tell who committed one of the murders.)

That was Raymond Chandler, I think--The Big Sleep.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Yep, The Big Sleep. I keep meaning to read it. More Mosley too (I read The Man in My Basement not that long ago).

[justinelavaworm.livejournal.com]

Most definitely Chandler's The Big Sleep. It's the death of the chauffer that goes unexplained.

I absolutely adore Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins books. Every single one of them. But his very best book is The Man in the Basement which is extraordinary. One of the best books I have ever read.

[marthawells.livejournal.com]

Yep that's it. It came up when the Bogart movie was being filmed, and I think there's a (deleted?) scene where Bogart goes to the DA's office and they practically do a flow chart trying to explain the plot to each other and the audience.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

OMG right! I don't remember reading about that in the MacShane Chandler bio, but it's in a Hawks bio:

http://books.google.com/books?id=JEvgRkHdEjkC&pg=PA382&lpg=PA382&dq=chandler+owens+chauffeur+%22don%27t+know%22&source=bl&ots=Oz9OUxfvXC&sig=QTTz89GpYIusf7MjxuZv1vqDi88&hl=en&ei=aRivSYyXMpK2sAOas8Ry&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result

[marthawells.livejournal.com]

Oh neat, thanks for the link! I heard about it from a Turner Classic Movies special that compared the two versions of the movie and showed all the deleted scenes, with info on the decision process, etc. It's nice to see a second source for the story.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Oh that sounds AWESOME. I love Hawks movies, esp the noir ones.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I read this years ago, and remember it fondly. I think I read one more of the series, but now can't remember the title. This one has the most memorable title, anyway.

[roadrunnertwice]

Thanks for reminding me I need more Mosley. I read a different Easy Rawlins book (Black Betty) during college and loved it.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Aww, I'm so glad you liked it! I should write it up too.

The classic bit about Chandler is they realized when filming The Big Sleep they didn't know who killed Owens, the chauffeur (whose body is found in a stunning set piece under 10 feet of water off a pier). Howard Hawks wired Chandler something like WHO KILLED OWENS? and Chandler wired back I DON'T KNOW. I don't remember how apocryphal it might be, tho.

(_I_ don't know who killed Owens, either.)

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing; it sounds wonderful.