Book description
The first novel by “master of mystery” (The New York Times) Walter Mosley, featuring Easy Rawlins, the most iconic African American detective in all of fiction. Named one of the “best 100 mystery novels of all time” by the Mystery Writers of America.
The year is 1948, the town is…
Why read it?
1 author picked Devil in A Blue Dress as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This is the foundation the rest of us are building on.
Easy Rawlins takes one simple job in 1948 Los Angeles and learns the rules are different for a Black man asking questions in a white city. Mosley makes the menace feel like weather, always in the air and never quite nameable. He gives you a hero who survives a rigged system by reading it more honestly than the people who run it.
I love that the detective work and the social truth are the same work here. It taught me the outsider sees the machinery clearest.
From LeRenyae's list on LeRenyae Watkins' favorite crime novels where the system is the real villain.
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