Spoilers!
Easy is his name, but not his nature. Walter Mosley’s 15th book in the Easy Rawlins series, 2021’s Blood Grove, is as good as the first Easy Rawlins book in 1990, Devil in a Blue Dress. Mosley writes Easy and the cases he gets up to as a private detective in 1950s and 1960s Los Angeles with such hard-boiled gritty flare — in Mosley’s hands, flare can be gritty! — while imbuing his stories with poignant, bone marrow deep reflections on America, race relations, and even the sorrows and pain of war to make for an enthralling read. The most jarring aspect of Mosley’s books from a race perspective is that despite Rawlins going up against all manner of LA seedy, often murderous criminals and crime bosses, white and Black alike, it is the ones wearing the badges and uniforms who present the most senseless, front-facing threat to Rawlins. He has back-up for the former in the form of his sociopathic best friend known as Mouse and a handful of others, including even some sympathetic LAPD cops, but when it comes to a trigger-happy, Black-hating cop with a gun pointed at his forehead? He’s at their mercy should they get froggy.
What’s so clever and marvelous about Mosley’s books is that they’re also so intricately plotted and detailed. The best part is that they start so unassuming at first until the dovetail into that seedy underworld with all manner of devilishly charismatic and fiendishly deadly characters. So it is in Blood Grove. A white Vietnam veteran comes to Easy’s PI office because he recently got into a scuffle with a Black man that resulted in the Black man being stabbed. The story goes that he was ostensibly saving a white girl from the Black man, and was then conked on the head after the skirmish and awoke to the girl and the Black man gone. He wants Easy to find out what the heck happened. At first, Easy assumes, and the evidence initially pans it out, that the story is a conjuring of the veteran’s PTSD. Which is relatable to Easy since he served in WWII and has his own demons over letting a Nazi survive the skirmish he had with him. However, as Easy continues to investigate, he realizes there is much more at play here, primarily a thread that unravels to San Bernadino and an armored vehicle heist three months prior.
As Easy unravels this thread, he continues to happen upon a murder victim related to the case somehow, including the Vietnam veteran, but also two Black men. Three women are connected to the case, including a white prostitute, a Black girl putting herself through law school, and the Vietnam veteran’s mother, who was also, and seemingly still is, a prostitute. But there’s also high-level crime bosses that want money they feel was owed to them that the murdered men had hidden somewhere. Because the murdered men’s trail leads back to Easy, that means they’re after Easy, too. And because Easy is Black and is tangentially entangled in these murders and the armored vehicle heist, the San Bernadino police and then even the FBI accost him greatly. If the three men who heisted the armored vehicle are Black, then it follows that Easy is involved merely because he’s Black, so their thinking goes. That dynamic, from low-level police accosting (because Easy’s riding in a Rolls-Royce) to this higher-level, more dangerous accosting, up to and including the potential for death, was the price one paid for the color of their skin to a debt that had the potential to go on forever. Easy at one point figured he’d have so much time grandfathered into his life, as it were, if he could get back the time allotted to such accosting, he’d probably be a child again. But what pushes Easy forward, whether dealing with criminals and gangsters, or the police — but I repeat myself — is this mantra he reflects upon, “You only die once, but giving in to fear was an endless defeat.” Oof.
Ultimately, the white Vietnam veteran got entangled in something he didn’t understand with a swindling white woman out for money, who was in league with his mother, no less, and that so happened to also involve the three Black men from the armored vehicle heist. The swindling white woman, who Easy feared more than anyone, save perhaps the police, just wanted to collect the money all for herself before those higher-level crime bosses could get their hands on it. Again, Mosley’s plots are so detailed, intricate, and clever that it’s difficult for me to summate them here for you in a digestible way. It’s almost like you just gotta read the book!
But seriously, this is only my second Mosley book, and correspondingly my second Easy Rawlins book, but I’m hooked on the pulsing, electric prose and flow, the warts-and-all makeup of the characters, including Easy, and the plotting that ensures I devour the book in a matter of hours. You won’t regret diving into Easy’s world.
Milam's Musings 