Little Scarlet--A Novel

In another outstanding offering, Mosley's Easy Rawlins rambles, full of repressed rage and passion, through the burnt-out streets of post-riot Watts. Rawlins has been recruited by the LAPD to track down whoever is murdering black women who date white men. As usual, our conflicted hero, sketched deftly and vividly by Mosley and voiced with layers of honesty and outrage by Michael Boatman, faces society's demons and his own in his search. Boatman gives life to the victims and perpetrators of prejudice and hate and illuminates the cast of characters--uptight white detectives; ghetto thugs; devious, sultry women; and sullen men--who often unwittingly play a part in social evolution. D.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Starred review from May 24, 2004
Set during the Watts riots of 1965, this eighth entry in Mosley's acclaimed Easy Rawlins series (Bad Boy Brawly Brown
, etc.) demonstrates the reach and power of the genre, combining a deeply involving mystery with vigorous characterizations and probing commentary about race relations in America. Easy Rawlins, 45, is—like the rest of black L.A.—angry: "the angry voice in my heart that urged me to go out and fight after all the hangings I had seen, after all of the times I had been called nigger and all of the doors that had been slammed in my face." But Easy stays out of the fiery streets until a white cop and his bosses recruit him to identify the murderer of a young black woman, Nola Payne; the cops suspect an unidentified white man whom Nola sheltered during the riots, and are worried that if they
pursue the case, word will leak and the riots will escalate. Easy, an unlicensed PI who also works as a school custodian, agrees to investigate, drawing into his quest several series regulars, including the stone killer Mouse, the magical healer Mama Jo and his own family. There's also a sexy young woman whose allure, like that of the violent streets, threatens to smash the life of integrity he has so carefully built. In time, Easy focuses on a homeless black man as the killer, not only of Nola but of perhaps 20 other black women, all of whom had hooked up with white men. This is Mosley's best novel to date: the plot is streamlined and the language simple yet strong, allowing the serpentine story line to support Easy's amazingly complex character and hypnotic narration as Mosley plunges us into his world and, by extension, the world of all blacks in white-run America. Fierce, provocative, expertly entertaining, this is genre writing at its finest. (July 5)

Forecast:
Strong reviews, Mosley's rep and word of mouth will get this title onto lists quickly; a 30-city author tour will add lift. Expect this to be Mosley's biggest seller yet
.

September 6, 2004
Admirably performed by reader Boatman, this audiobook—the latest in Mosley's series featuring Los Angeles PI Easy Rawlins (A Red Death
, etc.)—picks up immediately after the Watts riots of 1965. It is a time of change, and Rawlins finds himself in the unusual position of being asked to officially help the LAPD in its search for the killer of a young black woman. Mosley is at his best capturing the gritty ambience of a setting, and Boatman's skillful reading of the author's rich, descriptive prose transports listeners to that sweltering summer, when violence and fear simmered just below the city's surface. With the support of the LAPD in his back pocket, Rawlins makes his way through places that had previously been closed, if not forbidden, to the blacks of that time. Boatman does a fine job of conveying the growing sense of confidence and strength that comes with Rawlins's newfound freedom. Tightly edited and nicely produced, this already enjoyable audiobook is further enhanced by snippets of jazz accenting the story elements at the beginning and end of each disc. Simultaneous release with the Little, Brown hardcover (Forecasts, May 24).

March 15, 2004
Easy goes after the killer who did in a red-headed woman named Little Scarlet at the height of the Watts riots.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2004
Mosley returns to top form in this ninth installment of his celebrated Easy Rawlins series. In the early volumes, the calendar moved ahead almost one decade per book, but Mosley has been lingering through the 1960s--rightfully so, given the far-reaching impact of that turbulent era on African American life. Here it's the last days of the Watts riots in 1966, and a black woman, nicknamed Little Scarlet, has been found murdered in her apartment, the same building that an unidentified white man appeared to enter after escaping a mob of rioters. Did the white man commit the murder? The LAPD wants answers quickly, which is why Rawlins is asked to investigate. As has been the case throughout this series, the mystery at hand serves as a window opening on a historical moment. As Easy investigates, he finds himself forced to make sense of his own contrary feelings about the riots--his sadness at the loss of life and property in his community set against his recognition of inevitability, of the fact that the riots were expressing out in the open the anger every black man and woman had been forced to hide: "Now it's said and nothing will ever be the same. That's good for us, no matter what we lost. And it could be good for white people, too." Mosley remains a master at showing his readers slices of history from the inside, from a perspective that is all those things history usually isn't: intimate, individual, and passionate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)