Bad Boy Brawly Brown (Hardcover)

Mr. Mosely brings us back to the past, the very recent past, where the black detective really had all the problems the white detective had, i.e. the bad guys would attempt to put him in harms way, plus the subjugation of the (for the most part) white police force.

So it would be a mistake for us to say that Mr. Mosely brings a "refreshing" view. Painful, perhaps. Unfortunate, certainly. But always very well written.

Here Ezekial Rawlins is asked by his friend, John, to help his girlfriend Alva's son stay out of the limelight or rather, the searchlights of the police department. Brawly has been influenced by a Black Group named the First Men. Whether they truly seek only the leverage and subsequent parity that equal education can bring (the 1960's in Los Angeles was only a few years after Brown vs. Board of Education) or as the police believe, they were but a front for gun running, bank robbery and revolution, is denied to us as it has been in the last 40 years.

However, Mosely doesn't pass judgment on this. Who's to say that in some arenas of social justice the end . . . But we're not asked to go there. We follow Easy, troubled by a violent past he cannot avoid, haunted by the sins of omission and commission, as the bodies turn up. Easy is a noble man who struggles, like Marlowe before him, Spenser and Cole, to maintain his own sense of integrity. Like some of the music of that time, "(you) who are on the road, must have a code, that you can live by."

And Easy has that code, not always accepted by the people who love him or even by himself. But the code works and Mosely has another winner on his hands. John, the friend who first asked Easy Rawlins to help, says at the end that he is grateful for Easy's help in sorting out justice and greed, insult and victory, but all the while John wouldn't mind if he never saw Easy again. And it makes sense.

Outside of George Pelecanos, few tackle the task of racial injustice but more, the painful "getting along" in the novel genre as a background to murder and the mystery. Highly recommended stuff.