In honor of Black History Month, I’m revisiting an old friend: Easy (Ezekiel) Rawlins, created by acclaimed author, Walter Mosely. Easy is one of my favorite fictional detectives, his mysteries have been good reads over the years and they have revealed a community of people heroically navigating the dangerous world that can be America.
“Devil in a Blue Dress” is the first novel and the first movie made. It starred Denzel Washington as Easy and, in a brilliant performance, Don Cheadle as Mouse, his best friend. Together they solve a complicated and entertaining murder mystery. But “Devil” is just the first of 17 novels featuring Easy Rawlins.
“Devil” begins in l948 and the following novels roam the 20th Century to “Farewell Amethystine.” They explore the decades from post World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Watts riots. First, they are crackling good stories, with complicated plots, surprising endings. Throughout, author Walter Mosely describes an intuitive, gregarious and curious protagonist whose basic character shines through the ages.
Over the the decades, Easy meets some truly evil people and many others who are simply corrupt, but his curious nature and his core values (seeking the truth, valuing justice) remain constant. And he carries the Black man’s burden. In the 11th novel of the series, he reflects on his life
“…living in the cracks: a slave, nigger, jigaboo, coon, spade, spear-chucker, darky, boy. Walking down the street I was always a target. And a target couldn’t afford roots or a broken heart. A target couldn’t fire back on the men who used him for sport.”
The Easy series delves deeply into the mystery of what it is like to be a Black American in changing Los Angeles. Beginning just after World War II, Easy is a combat veteran, employed in the newly emerging defense industry, a new home owner and member of a close knit community of Black Americans also emerging into the middle class.
Then he loses his job.
Desperate to make his next mortgage payment, he reluctantly agrees to a “job” as a private investigator. And it takes him from the peaceful suburban dream into the company of liars, crooks and killers. Mosely’s first book, “Devil in a Blue Dress,” illuminates the first transition Easy undergoes as he discovers that he likes being his own boss, solving problems and even helping people. And when he gets in too deep among the crooks and killers, he draws on old friendships and old habits. These friends plus the wartime toughness he brought back from Europe all come into play.
In the rest of the series, Moseley takes Easy through a changing landscape, as he and his friends transition from orphans fleeing the old South to hustlers learning to survive in Los Angeles and finally to the success many find using their natural talents and energies . At the end of the series, Easy’s friends have become bar and restaurant owners, computer geniuses and partners in financial firms. Equally important, most create warm loving homes.
Easy lives the burden of being a Black Man in America. He is constantly harassed in what he calls “the game of cops and niggers.” Sometimes he is lucky to avoid jail or a beating. Sometimes not. But as time passes, he becomes known among the cops as someone they can call for help approaching the Black community. Resilience paid off when he fought with Patton’s forces and continued to be a tool through the rest of the twentieth century. (Although he only grudgingly gives the cops the help they ask for in the later novels.)
In Chapter 26 of “Blonde Faith,” Easy recognizes that time is slowly changing but perhaps not fast enough. He muses:
“…this litany of the past was fading but it has not gone away…I was an American citizen; a citizen who had to watch his step, a citizen who had to distrust the police and the government, public opinion, and even the history taught in schools.”
The novels are written using the first person, that is, told by Easy. His is a very literate, thoughtful and clear voice. It is not a voice you would expect from a black private detective engaging in segregated black neighborhoods. Easy explains that he has two voices in his head and two voices he cultivates as he navigates mid-twentieth century America, a country replete with stereotypes and cultural expectations. His inner voice uses the clearest of standard American, though he often reverts to the street dialects of his childhood and then the streets patois of Los Angeles.
This is one of many observations that reverberated with my own experiences, having been raised by a mother who spoke suburban Californian from Long Beach. When we moved back to Hawaii, Mom dropped that manner of speaking and for the rest of her life adopted the Hawaiian inflections of our neighbors and Japanese American relatives. (This gentle inflection developed out of the pidgin English created by the multi-Racial immigrants to Hawaii in the 19th Century.) We learn to use language to identify culturally and to gain acceptance with our peers. And Easy does this with grace and with a joyful gregariousness.
The result in the Rawlins series is an introduction to the Black experience that is understandable and without bias. The heroes of the novels are African Americans who have no shame in acting, speaking and being themselves. And the reader is the one that benefits the most.
And so I recommend the Easy Rawlins series, by Walter Mosely, to celebrate Black History Month. To celebrate the accomplishments of our Black neighbors and to admire the resilience and creativity they have brought from centuries of the Black experience. There is much to celebrate and much more work to be done.
The movie is not bad either. Here’s a list of titles:
