Little Scarlet is the ninth book (eighth novel) by Walter Mosley featuring the righteous janitor and unlicensed private investigator Ezekiel ("Easy") Rawlins. The series that began with Devil in a Blue Dress set in 1948. Little Scarlet is set just after the Watts Riot in the summer of 1965. Loot and one looted shoe-repair shop are significant. The Republican mayor (Sam Yorty) having had to appeal to the Democratic governor (Pat Brown) to deploy the National Guard to quell the riot and the nihilistic violence was sufficiently shocking to the local power elite that a police commissioner seeks the assistance of a Negro janitor to investigate a very sensitive crime.

A highly respectable young black churchwoman Nola Payne (called "Little Scarlet" for the reddish tinge of her hair) has been strangled and shot. She was seen by many rescuing a white man who had been pulled out of his car and was being chased by a black mob (I'd guess inspired by memories of the truck driver from the more recent riot following the Simi Valley jury's verdict in the case against the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King). Scarlet had had sexual intercourse in the six hours before her death, but does not appear to have been raped. She also did not own a gun. And, even if the white man she rescued was such a devil that he repaid her saving his life by taking hers, if he had a gun, why didn't he use it to slow down those who were chasing him with obvious intent to harm him? Though not particularly well-disposed toward white men, and using his connections to identify the suspect quickly, Easy also quickly realizes that the killer is a homeless black man whom Easy was certain killed another black woman.

Even with the magic paper from the police commissioner, Easy comes very close to being beaten up by LAPD officers on multiple occasions. The novel keenly exposes the rituals of domination and submission expected (and heretofore received) by policemen originally from the South or the offspring of emigrants from the South to southern California.

Easy's boyhood Louisiana friend Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, who was seemingly killed at the end of Little Yellow Dog, and revived in "Green-eyed death," the penultimate (sixth) story of Six Easy Pieces (in which there are seven stories...), is back, still as unstable and dangerous as nitroglycerine, but less witty than before. As usual, Easy needs to take care of one of the women whose heart "Mouse" has broken. Easy also has a an ardent and luscious young suitor and a patient but not unamorous common-law wife. Together, they are raising three children, none of whom is biologically related to either of them (is there such a thing as "common law children"? informally adopted anyway).

Easy also has a job as head custodian of Sojourner Truth Junior High School, which has been damaged by rioters, and owns property that has apparently not been damaged. The only way that he gets any sleep during the span of four days in the novel is to be shot. He consumes multiple breakfasts, too, along with a lot of coffee, donuts, and cigarettes.

Easy's erotic stirrings strike me as formulaic and the "Whodunit?" question is answered very quickly. Finding a homicidal derelict in the vastness of LA and not being beaten up by the police or by one or another black man rubbed the wrong way by Easy's movements and questions are the central components of the narrative. Easy is a knight errant in the Philip Marlowe tradition, a responsible man in the midst of black and white acting out. He seeks justice. Those charged with enforcing the law want order, and are not too particular about the letter of the law. Procedures and solutions that are outside the law are countenanced. Easy asked for nothing in exchange for helping the police. The deference his alliance commands surprises him, though he is obviously someone deserving of respect. Eventually, there is another reward that he did not anticipate but that is very fitting.

Easy's voice is compelling, though sometimes bordering on lecturing. The carefully plotted novel includes a very diverse cast of black characters (from a homeless killer to some tenuously succeeding), and some range of attitudes among the white characters (though most of these play one note, they do not all play the same note). There is comic relief not only in Easy's lustful thoughts and the repartee with various sensual black women (especially Juanda), but from the psychotically impulsive "Mouse" ("always ready to arrange a meeting with Death") and their more devious friend Jackson Blue ("as crooked as a pretzel, " Jackson "was a liar by nature and a thief from the first day he could close his hands around some other baby's rattle") who is seeking a job in a bank donning nonthreatening clear eyeglasses.

Although I don't think that enjoyment of Little Scarlet depends on having followed the series from the beginning (especially since that requires making it through Bad Boy Brawly Brown), understanding Easy and Mouse is considerably augmented by having read Gone Fishin', the first book with these characters that Mosley wrote, but which was not published until after the success of five more conventionally mystery genre novels. Mosley's series is not as ambitious as August Wilson's string of plays set in each decade of the twentieth century in Pittsburgh, but some enterprising literature graduate student is surely going to take on a contrast of it to Mosley's (with the Easy Rawlins series supplemented by his Socrates Fotlow stories set in the more recent past in LA, and a third, "Fearless" Jones series, in between). I don't think that I'm the only reader more interested in the history than in solving the murder mysteries (and I'm certain that I'm not the only one more interested in the characters than in the crimes).

----

This is my excellent contribution to the excellent and excruciating writeoff co-hosted by Slarter and CaptainD. Although I can be fairly cutting and have posted some one-star reviews, I never set out to read or view something bad in order to have something to trash (like Easy not seeking violence, but if rhetorical violence is necessary...). The only epinion of something I found excruciating, Gift of the Soul I would never have picked up or finished reading or written about except that I had an obligation for the first (and, to date, only) review copy epinions CL aimed at me). That will have to do for the "excruciating" twin.



Recommended: Yes