A Red Death - Hardcover

Mosley, Walter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393029980 ISBN 13: 9780393029987

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991

Synopsis

It's 1953 in Red-baiting, blacklisting Los Angeles, a moral tar pit ready to swallow "Easy Rawlins."

Easy is out of " the hurting business" and into the housing (and the favor) business when a racist IRS agent nails him for tax evasion. FBI Special Agent Darryl T. Craxton offers to bail him out if he agrees to infiltrate the First African Baptist Church and spy on alleged communist union organizer Chaim Wenzler. That's when the murders begin...

About this title

About the Author

Walter Mosley is the author of four previous mystery novels in the Easy Rawlins series: Devil in a Blue Dress (basis for the acclaimed film starring Denzel Washington), A Red Death, White Butterfly, and Black Betty, a New York Times bestseller. In August 1995 he published his first non-genre novel, RL's Dream, to widespread praise. Mosley is the current president of the Mystery Writers of America, a member of the executive board of the PEN American Center and founder of its Open Book Committee, and is on the board of directors of the National Book Awards. His novels are now published in eighteen countries. He is at work on a book featuring a new character, a philosophical and tough ex-convict named Socrates Fortlow; sections have already appeared in Esquire and GQ. A native of Los Angeles, Mosley lives in New York City.

Reviews

Mosley's second novel (after Devil in a Blue Dress ) confirms the advent of an extraordinary storyteller. It is five years after the events detailed in the first novel and Easy Rawlins has used the stolen money he kept back in 1948 to purchase a pair of L.A. apartment buildings. There he masquerades as the janitor, quietly enjoying the fruits of ownership and dabbling in private investigation. But he is suddenly in the grip of powerful government forces. When the IRS wants to know where Easy got the money to become a landlord, Easy's sole recourse is to agree to work undercover for the FBI on a witch-hunt to net Reds. The situation presents only the first of the moral dilemmas here: Easy's remorseless, deadly best friend, Mouse, has come to L.A. in pursuit of his ex-wife, EttaMae, who has fled with their young son. Etta, however, is the only woman Easy has ever loved, and she is more than willing to reciprocate--at least on the physical level. Solid and entertaining, the story nonetheless remains secondary to the portrait of a time and a place, to the indelible reality of Easy Rawlins, a black man in a world not yet ready to accept him. Mosley, with his unique talents, may well be in the process of creating a genre classic. BOMC, QPB and Mysterious Book Club selections.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Watts, 1953. Easy Rawlins, fresh from his Edgar-nominated debut (Devil in a Blue Dress), reluctantly agrees to spy on Communist union- organizer Chaim Wenzler for Red-baiting FBI agent Darryl Craxton in order to get IRS agent Reginald Lawrence--hot on his trail for back taxes on his off-the-books apartment buildings--off his back. But nobody (as Easy knows all too well) ever gets off a black man's back; and long before Poinsettia Jackson, one of Easy's hard-case tenants, is found hanging from a strap in the apartment she's stopped paying for and before Chaim Wenzler's work leads Easy to the African Migration movement, the First African Church, and Reverend Towne and Tania Lee are shot in flagrante delicto--inevitably to be followed by Wenzler himself--Easy realizes that the two federal men are playing him off against each other. Who pulled the trigger on Wenzler and the others? As in Devil in a Blue Dress, Mosley's plot is so tangled it hardly matters. But the laconic poetry of Easy's voice floats through a central situation much more original and compelling than before. This time Mosley earns the acclaim his first novel received. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Mosley's unique narrative voice ( Devil in a Blue Dress , LJ 6/1/90) reappears in the appealing person of Easy Rawlins, an astute and tough war veteran living in early 1950s Los Angeles. In deep trouble with the IRS for nonpayment of taxes, Easy half-heartedly agrees to spy on a suspected Jewish Communist for an avid FBI agent in return for leverage with the tax man. As before, Mosley's inclusion of life in Watts, contemporary social attitudes, and colloquial speech contribute to the excellence and authenticity of plot and character portrayal. Easy to take.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393029980
• ISBN 13: 9780393029987
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 284