Fearless Jones

Starred review from May 28, 2001
Abandoning the voice of his premier creation, Easy Rawlins, Mosley mines a new shaft of 1950s Los Angeles with a hero who combines the principles of Easy with the deadliness of Ray "Mouse" Alexander. The result is a violent, heroic and classic piece of noir fiction. Narrator Paris Minton is an appealing figure—an easygoing black man for whom the written word is salvation and whose nameless used bookstore in Watts is paradise. Then the beautiful Elana Love enters his store and brings with her more trouble than Paris has ever seen—enough trouble that Paris knows his only hope is his friend Fearless Jones. A former soldier, Jones is a riveting new creation. He's a man of both principle and action with an innate sense of justice—and as his name makes clear, he's afraid of nothing. The novel rips along with a hunt for the girl and a race among competing factions to find a missing bond that's the key to a fortune. For the black characters it's a desperate struggle to stay alive in a white world where the deck is stacked. One sly reference tells the reader we're still in the same world and time inhabited by Easy Rawlins, and that Fearless and Mouse are equally "bad." But Fearless is also a knight-errant and hopefully destined for further adventures as fine as this one. (June 5)Forecast:With a 20-city author tour and major advertising, Mosley's first thriller since 1996's
A Little Yellow Dog is sure to generate lots of interest and sales.

June 1, 2001
After forays into sf (Blue Light, LJ 10/1/98) and short fiction (Walkin' the Dog, LJ 8/99), Mosley returns to mystery a move that is fairly certain to please fans, although with each new detective novel he seems more and more set in his own formula. Here, instead of Easy Rawlins, the upwardly aspiring World War II veteran and informal private detective, and his sociopathic friend Mouse Alexander, Mosley presents Paris Minton and Fearless Jones the first a mild-mannered yet ambitious used-book dealer, the second a homicidally dangerous yet resolutely loyal companion (and also a World War II vet). This pair investigates the burning of Minton's bookstore as well as a series of murders in 1950s Los Angeles. Mixed up in a rather convoluted plot are Jewish Holocaust survivors, Israeli secret agents, a beautiful femme fatale, some eccentric evangelicals, and other assorted characters from black L.A. Mosley is still able to convey some of the difficulties of surviving in a racist, pre-Civil Rights society, but the quirky charm and devastating mood of postwar South Central L.A. are less pronounced in this novel than in his Easy Rawlins books. Still, given Mosley's popularity, this is recommended for all libraries. Roger A. Berger, Everett Community Coll., WA

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2001
What appears at first blush to be a new series from Walter Mosley is, in fact, an intriguing extension of his Easy Rawlins' novels. Just as Faulkner switched the focus of his Yoknapatawpha stories from family to family, so Mosley now gives us another set of characters living in Watts in the 1950s. Bookstore owner Paris Minton, like Easy, is a fairly recent arrival in Los Angeles, and he yearns for the sense of community he felt in his all-black southern town. Those yearnings are especially poignant here, as Paris finds himself homeless after his used bookstore (he lives in the back) is burned down. When it becomes clear that whoever torched the store would like to finish the job by getting rid of the owner, Paris, no man of action, needs the help of his war-hero friend, Fearless Jones. The pair quickly finds themselves forced to navigate in uncharted territory filled with white people trying to get their hands on stolen money. The parallels to the Rawlins' novels--Paris is a slightly more bookish Easy, while Fearless suggests a sweeter but equally lethal Mouse--never feel repetitive but, instead, add depth and resonance to the series, as Mosley views his larger theme of race relations in postwar Los Angeles from a slightly new perspective.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)