Little Green Easy Rawlins Mystery
First off, it's been such a long time between books and I truly thought the last book Blonde Faith was the last but with the way Easy ended up in the shape he was in, I knew good and well there was more to come. The sad thing is that we had to wait a good five and a half years to get it. Anyway, in the book, a good two months pass and Easy is slowly coming out of his coma from the accident he was in at the end of the last one. And already his ace coon boon, has a request that he look for a lost young boy who was last known to be in the company of hippies. So, Easy enlists the help of master herbalist and seer Mama Jo, who helps him get back on this side of the world with an elixir that will give him strength he needs to finish the case and get his health back on track. Of course, with Easy and Mouse not too far behind, you know there is surely to be some mayhem, murder and bodies to come with it. For the Mosley fans, this book won't(or may)disappoint you. my thing is I forgot what went down in the last book so as to catch up with this book but still the read to me kept me glued in. not at first, but with time and things started to work out, I got caught up in it and had to get it to the very end.
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Its been awhile, since 2007 in fact but its 'Easy' with Mr. Mosley. I slipped into the latest segment of Easy Rawlins like I do my favorite pair of jeans. Fast forward to 2013, Mosley does not disappoint nor does he insult Rawlins fans; 'Little Green' is mature and sublime like a glass of aged port or a sliver of aged cheese. I will say the 300 some odd pages just aren't enough.
BalasHapusThe characters are back: Mouse, Mama Jo, Feather, Jesus, and so many more. Easy is older more vulnerable as he recuperates from a near death experience. Mosley writes about Easy's transition into a new life; a milestone we can all agree to - aging. While Easy has Mama Jo's tonic to bring him back - we all have our own 'tonics' of resurrection. Mosley has done an outstanding job of reviving Easy Rawlings to reader fans after a SIX year hiatus! Whew!
Mosley's portrayal of the black man captivates and certifies. I can't get enough of Easy Rawlins...
"Little Green" is Worth the Wait! Reads Great and like my old, trusty pair of jeans; IT FITS! Kuddos to Mr. Mosley for an outstanding story! Please don't let it be another six year wait! ;)
I turned on to Walter Mosley through the Denzel Washington movie Devil in the Blue Dress, and I started with that book. I thought the book miles better than the movie, which wasn't bad but which didn't give us much of the inner life of Mosley's protagonist, Easy Rawlins. Rawlins has become more complex with each book, it seems. Here, he comes back from a horrific car crash, which may have been a disguised suicide attempt. Not even fully recovered, he looks for a Black teen who's gone off to Sunset Blvd. looking for hippies and who hasn't come back (the story takes place in 1967). He does this as a favor to Mouse, his stone-killer best friend and sociopath, who not only saved him from the car wreck, but now gives him a chance to get out of bed after two months of semi-coma.
BalasHapusEasy finds the boy fairly quickly, but the kid is in a world of trouble. The mystery part of the book is well-plotted. As to the portrayal of Sixties hippies, I can say only that Mosley's experience isn't mine, although he does catch the darker elements of the movement -- the ones which soured. There are also, of course, Mosley's insights on US race relations, but far more interesting to me is Rawlins's psychological journey. The crash has left him considering himself a dead man lingering on the edge of living. By the end of the book, you see him coming back, knowing that he has many reasons to live.
I also love Mosley's prose, at his best a master, as in this excerpt, describing an exhausted Easy climbing a long series of stairs:
"I ... had the almost hallucinatory impression of leaving an image of myself on each passing stair. Every progressive Easy was a few years older and weaker than the last. When I made it tot the small stone landing it felt like I had reached the century mark."
A "Nude Descending the Staircase" (also about time) in reverse. This sort of writing lifts this mystery novel from excellent genre fiction -- Parker, MacDonald, McBain, etc. -- to excellent novel, Raymond Chandler/Chester Himes territory. Highly recommended.
BalasHapusI've been a fan of Walter Mosley's writing since I discovered the first Easy Rawlins novel. With LITTLE GREEN, he's brought back Easy after a six year absence and death.
BalasHapusHis friend Mouse finds him on a cliff edge after his car had plunged over into the water and people had believed his body had floated away. Old Mama Jo had told Mouse Easy wasn't dead and the little man had found his friend.
After a month of near coma, he comes back and finds Mouse sitting beside him. Knowing Mouse, Easy asks what he needs. A young man had gone missing a few days before and needed to be found.
Easy gets up off his sick bed, with the aid of Mama Jo's-voodoo medicine-and begins looking.
The trail leads him into the hippie culture of L.A., a group Easy feels a strange kinship for. People looked down on by the straight establishment for the way they look, dress, believe.
It also leads him into confrontations with hoodlum types also looking for the young man.
What I like about Mosley's writing is it gives me a glimpse into a world different from my own, a world I wish to know better, a world where people weren't judged by their accomplishments or honesty, but the color of their skin.
And a damned good tale along the way.
In Little Green Easy Rawlins has lost (at least temporarily) the woman he loves and driven off the PCH into the rocks and sea. Comatose, he slowly returns to the world of the living as his friend Raymond Alexander asks him to take on a case.
BalasHapusA young man named Evander Noon has disappeared. Raymond has been involved with the man's mother in an as yet unspecified capacity; he calls him `Little Green' for (again) as yet unspecified reasons.
Easy is fortified by a voodoo concoction and is able to pursue the investigation. Evander has attempted to demonstrate his manhood by defying his mother's wishes and joined the hippies on the strip for a night of freedom and release. He is quickly dosed with LSD by a young woman who sells flowers which she has stolen from Beverly Hills gardens. The night is a blur, but it appears that Evander has been drawn into a desperate criminal action and is hunted down for a large cache of cash which has come into his possession.
Easy has multiple tasks: to regain his own physical and mental health, to find Evander and protect him from an assorted group of drug dealers and gangsters, to help Evander's mother, to keep Raymond from killing everyone in southern California and, as always, to navigate his way through a largely white world which is slowly changing, sometimes in positive ways.
In this late 60's world, Easy is now in his late 40's. He is a fully-licensed private investigator, with his own office. He also owns multiple units of rental property, is a heroic survivor of World War II (including the Battle of the Bulge) and a man who seems to know every lever of power and every individual in both the lights and the shadows of Los Angeles. Many of these characters are immensely interesting and Easy's investigation brings him in contact with a large number of them. As always, he utilizes all of his skills and street smarts, holding back the depth of his knowledge and wisdom whenever necessary to insure his survival. The fact that the story is told in retrospect, with Easy now reflecting on historically-distant events, adds perspective and nuance to the novel.
Raymond "Mouse" Alexander is there for much of the journey; he is one of the most memorable characters in contemporary crime fiction. Don Cheadle's rendition of him is one of DC's finest performances. We have, however, come a long way from Devil in a Blue Dress. This is the twelfth of the Easy/Mouse books and Walter Mosley's writing is smoother and more compelling than ever. The plot is complex but silk-smooth, the ending very satisfying. In some ways James Ellroy's literary history of Los Angeles (in the L.A. Quartet) is paralleled by Walter Mosley's literary history of black Los Angeles in this series. Both are wonderful and neither should be missed.
Highly recommended.
I, like a lot of Easy Rawlins fans, thought I'd seen the last of him in Blonde Faith back in 2007. I had no idea, until I saw Little Green being offered up on Amazon Vine, that Walter Mosley was planning a comeback for Easy. But I'm certainly glad he did! Easy who is 'mostly dead' from injuries he sustained in the car crash in Blonde Faith was discovered at the scene of the crash by his life-long friend Raymond Alexander whom we know as Mouse. After that he remains unconscious for some days. When he awakens he finds himself in a strange house but being tended by loved ones. In this weakened condition his friend Mouse asks him to find a young man who's gone missing by the name of Evander Noon whom Mouse calls Little Green, hence the title of the book. Even in his weakened state Easy's detective heart starts beating a little faster and he realizes that he must take the case or lie there and die. So it's his calling in life that brings him back to life. This is another fine Easy Rawlins tale replete with the vernacular of the times. It's rough and sometimes coarse as the characters need to be, given the situation. I highly recommend it.
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