Mosley, Walter

New York. 1990. July 1990. Norton. 1st Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket . 0393028542. 219 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Hugh O'Neill. Jacket illustration by John Jinks. keywords: Mystery America Black. FROM THE PUBLISHER - The time is 1948; the town is Los Angeles; the hero is Easy Rawlins, a tough black war veteran just out of a job at a defense plant. The mortgage payment's coming due, so Easy takes on some detective work from a silkily menacing white gangster, Dewitt Albright. The assignment: find the whereabouts of blonde femme fatale Daphne Monet, a singer known to frequent black jazz joints not usually hospitable to white patrons. Easy's quest for the bewitching Daphne takes him (and the reader) on a vivid tour of forties L.A., from the barber shops and raucous clubs of Watts, to the elegant boardrooms and residences of a white political establishment with a great deal to hide. Once found, Daphne Monet proves an easier woman to locate than to fathom. She incarnates the promise of love and the threat of violent death. With his sardonic, gleefully murderous sidekick Mouse to guide him, Easy enters the dangerously complex moral territory of race relations and necessary violence, where questions of right and wrong depend for their answers on just whose side the law is on. DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS mixes the hard-boiled poetry of Raymond Chandler with the social realism of Richard Wright. Its narrative swings with the complex rhythms of modern urban life. It's a smashing entertainment - and more. ‘ DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS is a dark, delicious tale of post-World War Two L.A., city of sadness and disillusion. Walter Mosley weaves his own kind of magic: he's the chanter of our mean modern times.' - Jerome Charyn. inventory #17097 ISBN: 0393028542.