Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins and Blue Light

A Black Raymond Chandler Who Can Write Like C. S. Lewis

Apr 29, 2009

Walter Mosley writes fiction the way fiction ought to be written. At times it is Raymond Chandler meets Chester Himes, at others, Chandler and C. S. Lewis on acid.

Walter Mosley writes the sort of books that deserve to be read. He has a fast, flowing style and an eye for detail that drags his readers along with him into whatever world he wants them to be involved in.

Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins Books

His first, and probably his favourite character is Easy Rawlins, a black private eye operating in the same mean streets of Los Angeles as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, but a decade after Marlowe hung up his gun, and facing the added problems associated with being black in a racist city. He is also operating in the period around and after the Watts Riots.

Easy Rawlins is a self-educated private eye who knows the black areas and takes on cases for black clients (who may or may not be able to pay) and for white clients who have a need for a private detective who can get inside the black community.

Life for Easy Rawlins is not, despite his name, easy. Fortunately he has a friend, nicknamed Mouse, who provides the muscle whenever necessary. Mouse is one of those complex characters much loved of the writers of hardboiled detective fiction. He is loyal to his friend and deadly to anyone who crosses him.

Walter Mosley has written eleven Easy Rawlins novels, each one as readable as the next and each one a must-have for the fan of hardboiled detective or mystery fiction. They are (together with dates):

Walter Mosley’s Blue Light

In the gap between Gone Fishing and Bad Boy Brawley Brown, Walter Mosley turned his hand to science fiction (possibly the better word is fantasy) with a magisterial novel called Blue light, published in 1998. This book reads as though Raymond Chandler and C. S. Lewis had sat down together with a bottle of Scotch and a supply of LSD and decided to write a novel together.

Blue Light is set in 1865 and the eponymous blue light shines out of the skies over northern California. As it touches people, it transports them to higher stages of being. Coming together, these special people are staked by something bad and the reader is presented with the traditional fantasy tale of good versus evil.

Why Walter Mosley Should be Read

In delivering magnificent books in these two very different genres, Walter Mosley demonstrates that he really is master of his craft. Blue Light is an excellent fantasy story, well told by a master story-teller who is capable of holding the reader tighter than a kidnapper holds his hostage. The Easy Rawlins series offers a gripping insight into a world that is both similar to, but in subtle ways different from, the white Los Angeles that Raymond Chandler introduced his reader to all those years before.

There are few writers who are worthy to be discussed in the same breath as both Raymond Chandler and C. S. Lewis. Walter Mosley is one of those few.

The copyright of the article Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins and Blue Light in Detective Fiction is owned by Alistair McCulloch. Permission to republish Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins and Blue Light in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.