Six easy pieces : Easy Rawlins stories /

Easy Rawlins is 44 and working a steady job as head custodian at Sojourner Truth Junior High School; mourning the death of his friend Mouse; caring for his adopted children, Jesus and Feather; and pining for his live-in girlfriend, Bonnie. But this "guy who trades in favors" --really an unofficial detective who helps those who can't go to the police--isn't ready to live the quiet life. As he works a variety of cases involving theft, blackmail, and usually murder, the ghost of his violent alter ego Mouse seems to be flitting about the periphery--Is he really dead?--and Easy's sense of unease is compounded by deep insecurity in his relationship with the woman he loves. This collection of related short stories has an unusual lineage: all but the last, "Amber Gate," were first published in Washington Square Press reissues of all six classic Easy Rawlins mysteries this year (Six Easy Pieces picks up just after the time of 1996's A Little Yellow Dog). Collecting them so soon would feel more like a marketing ploy if they didn't work so well together; despite periodic recaps of the action-to-date, the book reads like an episodic novel. Mosley is as fine as ever, offering compelling commentary on black-white relations in 1964, writing in a style so simple that it deceives us into thinking writing great fiction is as easy as putting one foot in front of the other. It's not, but turning these pages is. --Keir Graff

Fans of Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries received a bonus when Washington Square recently reissued in trade paper the six novels that preceded the latest one, Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002). Each reprint contained an original short story featuring Easy. Now, those stories and a seventh never before published have been gathered together in a volume that's something of a patchwork but still vintage Mosley. In his mid-forties, with a makeshift but tight family and a respectable and responsible job, Easy no longer needs to depend on trading favors to earn a living. But these stories reflect a more restless and reckless man-one who finds himself being drawn to the street life he thought he had left behind. Energized and unsettled by rumors that the dangerous and unpredictable Raymond Alexander, better known as Mouse, might still be alive, Easy undertakes to determine the truth. That extended search also finds Easy undertaking a number of jobs that recall his forte of being a black man more capable than most of dealing with the volatile intersection of blacks and whites in Los Angeles. In short order he investigates arson, murder, a missing person and other crimes. The linked stories form an extended search not only for Mouse but also for answers as Easy confronts the familiar demons of mid-life crisis. Easy occupies center stage, surrounded by a stellar cast of both new and familiar characters, while the spirit of Mouse hovers enticingly nearby. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Ezekiel Rawlins, a black man living in pre-Civil Rights-era America, is featured in seven previous Mosley novels, and we've come to respect his streetwise and self-assured persona and admire his perception and his unique moral compass. Here, Easy returns in seven interconnected short stories set in 1964 Los Angeles. Although he is now settled, with a responsible job, comfortable house, and happy family, Easy continues to do favors by investigating cases for friends who can't easily take their problems to the police. He also continues to agonize and grieve over the death of his best friend, Mouse. The voice of M.E. Willis, controlled and urbane, becomes the perfect vehicle for Easy. The CD track lengths are slightly overlong at 5-71/2 minutes. Still, this program is highly recommended.-Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib., Dubuque, IA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Even though six of the seven color-coded stories here have already appeared as pendants to recent paperback reprints of Mosley's first six Easy Rawlins novels, it's a special pleasure to have them all gathered together with the brand-new "Amber Gate," whose inquiry into the murder of much-loved prostitute Jackie Jay makes it the closest thing to a whodunit Mosley (Bad Boy Brawly Brown, p. 709, etc.) has yet produced. True, the tales, covering a few months in Watts in 1964, revisit much the same territory over and over: Easy's asked by a trusting friend to find some missing relative or clear an acquaintance suspected of some crime, descends into a demi-criminal underworld, triggers an outburst of cathartic violence, and then goes back to his job as janitorial supervisor at Sojourner Truth Junior High. By bundling them together, however, Mosley strengthens the links among them: Easy's struggle to find dignity in his work and provide a role model for his two children and his quiet jealousy when his stewardess lover Bonnie Shay is romanced by the activist son of a Senegalese chief. In "Smoke," the first and best of the stories, Easy tries masquerading as his friend Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, presumed but not proved dead, to get to the bottom of a fire at Sojourner Truth, but has to face the fact that he's hamstrung by his un-Mouselike reluctance to hurt and kill. As Easy's alter ego, Mouse continues to haunt the others as well. Despite the repetition, readers who missed these meaty, powerful stories in their paperback debuts will gobble them up at one sitting. Author tour