Synopses & Reviews
It's 1953 in Red-baiting, blacklisting Los Angeles, a moral tar pit ready to swallow Easy Rawlins. Easy is out of "the hurting business" and into the housing (and favor) business when a racist IRS agent nails him for tax evasion. Special Agent Darryl T. Craxton, FBI, offers to bail him out if he agrees to infiltrate the First American Baptist Church and spy on alleged communist organizer Chaim Wenzler. That's when the murders begin....
Review
"Who pulled the trigger on Wenzler and the others? As in Devil in a Blue Dress, Mosley's plot is so tangled it hardly matters. But the laconic poetry of Easy's voice floats through a central situation much more original and compelling than before. This time Mosley earns the acclaim his first novel received." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"A Red Death confirms just how ambitious Mosley's acclaimed Easy Rawlins series means to be. The tale presents a social history of black life in Watts over the course of several decades via the conventions of the hard-boiled private eye novel....Highly recommended." Library Journal
Review
"Beneath the conventional and trite mystery plot lies a subtext in which the author exhibits the sinewy moral intellect of Baldwin at his best. Mosley is a social critic posing as a mystery writer, much as his character, Easy, is a landlord posing as a maintenance man. Mystery fans may find A Red Death to be a bit disappointing; students of the human condition will find it an absorbing read." San Francisco Review of Books
Review
"Fascinating and vividly rendered...exotic and believable, filled with memorable individuals and morally complex situations." Wall Street Journal
Review
"No other American writer...has successfully managed to mold the detective form into a historical serial of this sort, and one can only admire the fision behind the adventure." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Mosley's skills are, in a word, prodigious." Detroit News/Free Press
Review
"In Mosley's noir-like 1950s Los Angeles, the necessity of work, any work, and the insidious intersection of politics and race run fierce and familiar. Like Carl Franklin's transcendent B-movie One False Move, this narrative shoves pulp tropes through a scrim of color and prejudice, resuscitating a weary form in the process." Voice Literary Supplement
Review
"The thriller or detective story, raised to a higher level...action, suspense, a well-crafted plot...fast-moving [and] enjoyable." New York Newsday
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"This is a master at work: we would be well advised to seek everything Walter Mosley writes." The Indianapolis News
Review
"A Red Death is a straightforward, cleanly nasty treat. The writing is funky and knowing, with a no-fools cast." Mirabella
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"Mosley...is here to stay and not to be missed." Los Angeles Times Book Review
Synopsis
A "fascinating and vividly rendered" (The Wall Street Journal) mystery featuring one of crime fiction's greatest protagonists--private investigator Easy Rawlins--as he agrees to a dangerous surveillance job. It's 1953 in Red-baiting, blacklisting Los Angeles--a moral tar pit ready to swallow Easy Rawlins. Easy is out of the hurting business and into the housing (and favor) business when a racist IRS agent nails him for tax evasion. Special Agent Darryl T. Craxton, FBI, offers to bail him out if he agrees to infiltrate the First American Baptist Church and spy on alleged communist organizer Chaim Wenzler. That's when the murders begin....
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.