Devil in a Blue Dress
An Easy Rawlins Novel
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3.7 • 18 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Devil in a Blue Dress, a defining novel in Walter Mosley’s bestselling Easy Rawlins mystery series, was adapted into a TriStar Pictures film starring Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins and Don Cheadle as Mouse.
Set in the late 1940s, in the African-American community of Watts, Los Angeles, Devil in a Blue Dress follows Easy Rawlins, a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Monet, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We adore Raymond Chandler’s and Dashiell Hammett’s hard-boiled detective classics, but Walter Mosley’s riveting debut gives a much-needed update to the golden age of noir. Mosley’s protagonist, Easy Rawlins, is a black World War II vet who finds himself newly unemployed in the segregated L.A. of the late 1940s. Easy is hired to find a white businessman’s missing girlfriend in the jazz nightclubs she frequents; his no-nonsense instinct for the truth—and his weakness for gorgeous women—could make him the ideal man for the case…or the perfect fall guy. Sexy and atmospheric, Devil in a Blue Dress is a perfect introduction to Mosley’s stellar mystery series.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This jaunty crime novel, set in L.A. in 1948, introduces Ezekiel ``Easy'' Rawlins, a recently laid-off mechanic who is young, black and--but for the need to meet the mortgage on his new house--a most reluctant sleuth. Easy hails originally from the tough Fifth Ward in Houston; he served his country, landing on the Normandy Beach. He knows racism firsthand and seeing too many white men in one day unnerves him. But a white businessman, Dewitt Albright, engages Easy to locate a beautiful French woman named Daphne Monet who has a ``predilection for the company of negroes.'' She also has $30,000 of someone else's money. Easy becomes entangled in a chain of events that takes him to bar after bar to meet a range of characters, most of whom are seeking their own advantages in the pursuit of Daphne. With bodies piling up, there is no turning back for Easy, as he is dogged by brutish white cops and a few ``brothers'' none too friendly. The language is hard-boiled (``Somewhere between the foo young and the check I decided to cut my losses'') and the portrait of black city life gritty and real. But the first-person narrative, which hurtles along with improbable transitions and sketchy psychological portraits, leaves the reader winded rather than exhilarated at the book's predictable conclusion. 25,000 first printing; $25,000 ad/promo; movie rights to Reuben Cannon ; Mysterious Book Club and QPB selections.
Customer Reviews
Number 1 Walter Mosley fan
Amazing