That’s the way Joe talked. He wanted you
to feel the nuance of what he meant.
Walter Mosley, Gray Dawn, Page 179
In this thrilling mystery from
"master of craft and narrative" Walter Mosley (National Book
Foundation), Detective Easy Rawlins has settled into the happy rhythm of his
new life when a dark siren from his past returns and threatens to destroy the
peace he's fought for.
The name Easy Rawlins stirs excitement in the hearts of readers and fear in the
hearts of his foes. His success has bought him a thriving detective agency,
with its first female detective; a remote home, shared with children and pets
and lovers, high atop the hills overlooking gritty Los Angeles; and more
trouble, more problems, and more threat to those whom he loves. In other words,
he’s still beset on all sides.
A number of below-the-law powerbrokers plead with Easy to locate a mysterious,
dangerous woman—Lutisha James, though she’s gone by another name that Easy will
immediately recognize. 1970s Los Angeles is a transient city of delicate,
violent balances, and Lutisha has disturbed that. She also has a secret that
will upend Easy’s own life, painfully closer to home.
Easy Rawlins is a black PI located in L.A. Mosley started the Easy Rawlins mystery series in 1990, thirty-five years ago. It was set in the 1950s. Easy was a young man at the time. It’s now the 1970s. He’s in his early 50s and has two young adult children he’s made his own without blood bonds. In Gray Dawn, Easy has three problems.
A strange client wants him to track down a woman for a reason that Easy doesn’t believe, but he accepts the assignment. Little does he know that when he finds her, it will bring him full circle with bonds made in his youth.
His adopted son, Jesus, is hiding out from two agents of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), predecessor of the DEA. He started out as a fisherman, but friends tell Easy that fishing has been off along this coast, and Jesus is bringing in tons of marijuana on his boat. Jesus tells him the agents are bent and forcing him to mule marijuana for them to sell. He wants to stop even if it is only pot.
Easy is training a young woman, Niska, in the PI art. He used to think there was a divide between men’s and women’s work, but he’s recognizing the world is changing. But she’s young, naïve, and needs his oversight more than she understands.
The Easy Rawlins mystery series has been his longest running. Gray Dawn is the seventeenth book —so he’s written approximately one book every two years. That’s just in this series. He’s a prolific writer having four other series, which he’s kept to mostly trilogies. He also has written YA and Sci-Fi. It was interesting that Mosley starts the book with a Note from the Author. In it he tries to explain to younger readers what discrimination was like for blacks in the 1950s. Since then, so much has changed for the better in our culture that he understands that younger readers can’t fathom the past nor will they accept Easy’s underlying anger, defensiveness, and hatred for those who still hold onto prejudice.
When I started reading Mosley, I read books from the library. When Mosley branched out with other series in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I thought he had abandoned Easy. I tried to read another series, but I couldn’t get into the characters like I could with Easy. It was then I lost track of Mosley—until now. I was thrilled to see this book on Amazon with a Kindle format. After downloading it, I got lost in tales of my old friend. I must go back and find where I left the series, then again, after thirty-five years, starting at the beginning is probably my best option.
