Devil in a Blue Dress
An Easy Rawlins Novel
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4.2 • 279 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
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
Beauty kills
A great way to access Mosley and his character, Easy Rawlins. LA is a gritty backdrop and, as is common in thriller fiction, yet another character in the novel. Easy is always one inch away from getting wasted by evil characters -some enemies and some friends- and he does get beat up plenty, but he manages to outsmart the nasties and figures out how to get to resolution. Easy doesn't like violence and especially its excesses, but he seems surrounded by it. The devil in the title has a complicated little secret: her beauty is such that grown men (including Easy) are ready to forget her lies and her treacheries. Everybody harbors the illusion that they could live happily ever after with her. LA urban noir at its best.
Devil in a Blue Dress.... Too good.
Perhaps the most consistent, finest mystery writer in America since Hammett and Chandler, Walter Mosley never ceases to amaze, and Devil in a Blue Dress is one of his best.
Beautifully structured, fast-paced, the novel is made to be read in a single, long sitting - maybe on a rainy Sunday, with a bottle of rye or bourbon- so the reader can spend the entire day with Easy Rawlins and Mouse and Daphne Monet.
And if that's not enough, watch the movie version with Denzel Washington and Jennifer Beal and Don Cheadle. Magnificent.
I just love “Easy” Rawlings
Not a bad book in the series. The period is LA right after WW2. Ezechial always seems to be short a lil bit o paper to pay his mortgage, but owning his home takes our Easy on some wild rides for that payday.