Synopses & Reviews
In the beginning...there was Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins and Raymond "Mouse" Alexander two young men setting out in life, hitting the road in a "borrowed" '36 Ford headed for Pariah, Texas. The volatile Mouse wants to retrieve money from his stepfather so he can marry his EttaMae. But on their steamy bayou excursion, Mouse will choose murder as a way out, while Easy's past liaison with EttaMae floats precariously in his memory. Easy and Mouse are coming of age and everything they ever knew about friendship and about themselves is coming apart at the seams....
Review
"Unlike the other books in the series, which are very much in the private eye tradition of deduction and disclosure, Gone Fishin' is a short, muscular and violent coming-of-age adventure." Dick Lochte, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review
"This novel-length prologue to Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins mystery series will disappoint anyone expecting another of his atmospheric whodunits....While these ingredients might promise an entertaining crime thriller, what they yield is a plodding Southern Gothic." Bill Kent, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"What takes place is part thriller and part coming-of-age novel, and it works fine on both levels....The young Easy...stands on his own without the help of the later books, but for those who know the series, this short novel opens a treasured window into the past of a very good friend." Bill Ott, Booklist
Review
"Perhaps the extraordinary acclaim that's greeted each entry in Mosley's Easy Rawlins series of detective novels has to do with the way he shows us what Chandler didn't: black life in Los Angeles during the '40s and '50s. But the books themselves aren't much more than the usual hardboiled fantasy, masochistic and narcissistic in equal measure....Mosley lingers on the beatings and the pain like a kid who can't keep from poking a loose tooth, and his subtext is pretty obvious: Easy's lickings are symbolic of the spiritual beatings a black man takes every day....In the new Gone Fishin'...Mosley seems to be aiming for Hemingway and Faulkner....Do people fall for this stuff because the idea of a black writer of hard-boiled fiction is a novelty, or because [his] clipped, faux Hemingway prose makes Mosley's phony hard truths go down easier? He may not have it as cushy as Mouse, who boasts of 'a hundred women to suck my dick.' But a hundred critics to kiss his ass ain't hay." Charles Taylor, Salon.com
Review
"[This] is, in some respects, the best of Mosley's novels....It firmly establishes Mosley as a writer whose work transcends the thriller category and qualifies as serious literature." Time
Review
"As [Easy and Mouse] take the car trip to hell, you'll want to be riding shotgun." Playboy
Synopsis
It's 1939 and Easy and Mouse are young men just setting out in life--Easy has yet to develop his skill for unraveling the secrets of others, and Mouse has yet to kill his first man. But all that will soon change. In the beginning there was Ezekiel Easy Rawlins and Raymond Mouse Alexander, two young men setting out in life, hitting the road in a borrowed '36 Ford headed for Pariah, Texas. The volatile Mouse wants to retrieve money from his stepfather so he can marry his Etta Mae.
But on their steamy bayou excursion, Mouse will choose murder as a way out, while Easy's past liaison with Etta Mae floats precariously in his memory. Easy and Mouse are coming of age and everything they ever knew about friendship and about themselves is coming apart at the seams.
As Mosley takes Easy and Mouse on this journey to manhood, he weaves together a remarkable cast of friends and foes, who are introduced here for the first time and will later appear in Easy Rawlins mysteries. This is the chance to unravel the mystery behind the souls of every character.
Synopsis
In the beginning...there was Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins and Raymond "Mouse" Alexander -- two young men setting out in life, hitting the road in a "borrowed" '36 Ford headed for Pariah, Texas. The volatile Mouse wants to retrieve money from his stepfather so he can marry his EttaMae. But on their steamy bayou excursion, Mouse will choose murder as a way out, while Easy's past liaison with EttaMae floats precariously in his memory. Easy and Mouse are coming of age -- and everything they ever knew about friendship and about themselves is coming apart at the seams....
Synopsis
This prequel to the popular Easy Rawlins series (President Bill Clinton is a self-professed fan) fills in the early years in Houston before Easy and Mouse migrated to California. On the brink of marrying his ladylove, EttaMae, Mouse persuades Easy to travel to a town called Pariah for the sake of acquiring quick cash. The journey is an arduous one, robbing Easy of what little innocence he had left. Gone Fishin' is essential reading if one is to understand the motives behind Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, the man readers have come to know and care for through previous novels.
About the Author
Walter Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series, the novels
Bad Boy Brawly Brown,
Fearless Jones,
Blue Light, and
RL's Dream, and a collection of stories,
Always Outnumbered,
Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award.
He was born in Los Angeles and lives in New York.