Although known mainly as a crime fiction writer, African-American author Walter Mosley has written in many areas, including science fiction and non-fiction, and for the stage.
If you’ve never read any of Mosley’s work, here is an introduction to his fictional works.
By far, Mosley’s most popular novels belong to the Easy Rawlins series. Easy Rawlins is a former Second World War vet turned private eye solving crimes in the Los Angeles of the 1940s to ’60s. The series made its debut in 1990 with Devil in a Blue Dress.
Set in 1948, the story introduces Rawlins as recently unemployed (having been fired from an airplane factory by a racist manager) and in debt. Also introduced is Rawlins’ somewhat sketchy friend Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander.
As for career changes, both enter the somewhat clandestine field of doing “outside-the-law favours” but, by book’s end, Rawlins begins his life as a detective. The next 13 novels see him become more established, and eventually licensed, as a detective and the urban strife around him deepening.
The story arc is mostly chronological, the exception being the sixth novel, Gone Fishin’, which flashes back to 1939 to give more information about Mouse’s background and to introduce characters who will appear in other Mosley novels.
‘Fearless’ Jones, another Rawlins acquaintance, made his own series debut in Mosley’s 2001 novel named for the character.
Set in 1950s L.A., Jones is also a private detective who is enlisted by small bookstore owner (and narrator) Paris Minton when the latter’s store is destroyed by a thug looking to collect a bond.
The second novel, Fear Itself, sees both Jones and Minton working on a missing person case, naturally with dire consequences. The third, Fear of the Dark, brings in the complex dynamics of family, namely Minton’s enterprising cousin Ulysses ‘Useless’ Grant.
Mosley’s other protagonists include Leonid McGill, a private eye in a series set in the New York City of the present; and Socrates Fortlow, an ex-con struggling to live a better life in the short story collections Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Walkin’ the Dog.
Mosley’s science fiction has not scored as high as his crime fiction on online book reviews but may be worth trying all the same. A good place to start would be the dual novel set Stepping Stone and Love Machine: Two Short Novels from Crosstown to Oblivion.
In Stepping Stone, a holographic vision haunts mailroom worker Truman Pope, shocking him out of his mind-numbing everyday life. The boundaries between individuality and the collective are dissolved in a disturbing fashion in the Huxleyian Love Machine, where data analyst Lois Kim unwittingly becomes part of Co-Mind, a doomsday scenario of a different sort.
A Good Read is a column by Tri-City librarians that is published on Wednesdays. Vanessa Colantonio works at Coquitlam Public Library.
