I haven't really loved any of the Easy Rawlins novels, this was better than the others. I really love this author, but mysteries are not my thing to begin with and I guess these just feel like what he writes when he needs to churn out books quickly. Good but not great.
Racial tensions and America's civil rights movement have previously figured into Walter Mosley's series about sometimes-sleuth Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins. But Bad Boy Brawly Brown turns what had been a background element into compelling surface tension. The year is 1964, and though Easy seems settled into honest work as a Los Angeles custodian, he's having other problems--notably, his adopted son's wish to quit school and lingering remorse over the death (in A Little Yellow Dog) of his homicidal crony, Raymond "Mouse" Alexander. Yet he remains willing to do "favors" for folks in need. So, when Alva Torres comes to him, worried that her son, Brawly Brown, will get into trouble running with black revolutionaries, Easy agrees to find the young man and "somehow ... get him back home." His first day on the job, however, Rawlins stumbles across Alva's ex-husband--murdered--and he's soon dodging police, trying to connect a black activist's demise to a weapons cache, and exposing years of betrayal that have made Brawly an ideal pawn in disastrous plans.
SUSPNSEFUL !
This is a very interesting book. It is told from the point of view of Easy Rawlings, a man who understands and can make his way through a criminal element of L.A., but who has transcended all that in his own life. The ending was a total surprise to me.
A good mystery.
Walter Mosley's continuing story of Easy Rawling, private detective. Good series
