Book 1: Blonde Faith

100 Books in One Year: Blonde Faith, by Walter Mosley.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I already adore Walter Mosley. I am predisposed to love any of his novels, especially the Easy Rawlins novels. It should be no surprise that I give high marks to the newest Rawlins mystery, Blonde Faith.

For those unfamiliar with Mosley, he has written 11 Easy Rawlins mysteries, beginning with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990. Describing one of these books in and of itself would be an injustice; they are truly a series and the character of Easy, as well as the city of Los Angeles, and the United States itself, grow throughout the books.

For instance, in Devil, Easy is an unemployed machine worker in 1950s small town of Los Angeles; he and his friends are “Negro” or “colored” and Easy is on his best behavior around the white men who draw him into a mystery beyond his control. By the time of Blonde Faith, the post-Watts 1960s, Easy is a licensed PI, who calls himself “black” and demands “Mr.” And “sir” from the white folks who continue to disrespect his skin color. Los Angeles has finally become a city, with distinctive sections dividing black and Hispanic, and fewer and fewer avocado trees holding back the concrete.

Like the other Rawlins books, Easy is set on the case of a colorfully named friend, Christmas Black, who has disappeared, leaving his daughter, Easter Dawn Black, in Easy’s care. Christmas is a Vietnam veteran, a war that Mosley carefully contrasts with Easy’s service in World War II, and a killer. He disappearance is entwined with the disappearance of a thief named Pericles Tarr and both of them are, of course, linked to Easy’s missing best friend, Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, easily the finest character in Mosley’s universe.

As it is in the best of Mosley’s books, the action is tied up with a beautiful woman, Faith Laneer, an ex-nun and missionary who had the bad luck to marry a drug dealer and go to Christmas Black for help. While on the case, Easy is also trying to deal with the dissolution of his adopted family. His son Jesus (the little boy he saved in Devil) has moved out and had a baby, his daughter Feather is almost a woman, and Easy is still pining for Bonnie, the lover he sent away to save Feather’s life. All these plot developments have come from previous novels, and Blonde Faith is nothing if not the portrait of a man on the edge, a man who has lost everything and doesn’t really care that happens to him. The novel’s final scene is maddening; it is a completely ambiguous as to Easy’s fate. It is the kind of moment that made me want to drive straight to LA and shake the shit out of Mosley.

Again, for the uninitiated, Mosley’s books are a love letter to the city of Los Angeles. Mosley’s work is valuable in and of itself, but it has special value for bringing attention to a side of LA not seen in other noir or LA books that focus on the wealthy and glamorous. Mosley’s LA is all about tarpaper speakeasies and shotgun houses and backwoods witches and folk that still know each other from the Fifth Ward back in Houston. Black Los Angeles is still a small town, even in the 1960s, and Easy and Mouse are stars of the community, one for doing good and one for being very, very bad.

In addition to the city of Los Angeles, blackness is also a major theme. Easy constantly thinks about and notices the negotiations he makes with other black and white people. There is a steady commentary on race in America throughout all of Mosley’s work, and it only strengthens the drama and expands on Easy’s character. By Blonde Faith, Easy has a few white men that he calls friends, but that does not stop him from considering their race at all times, and noting the ways in which they have to help him get through ordinary situations, like dealing with a security guard that doesn’t think a black man belongs in his building.

Sexuality is as important as blackness in Mosley’s novels. Women never seem to be just pretty, but beautiful, and even those that are plain are so full of sexual energy that they practically sizzle on the page. The titular Faith Laneer is as gorgeous as a movie star, and Easy begins a relationship with a young girl, Tourmaline, who turns heads and almost makes him forget his lost love. Even men in Mosley’s novels are either handsome or sexy, and he ahs a gift for physical description that I find missing in many other novelists. His sex scenes are tense and realistic without being graphic. For a gay man, Mosley seems to truly understand women, and incorporates personality and important character notes into physical description. To wit,

“Most beauty fades upon closer examination. Coarse features, unnoticed awkwardness, false teeth, scars, alcoholism, or just plain dumb; there is an abundance of possible flaws that we might miss on first sight. These blemishes are what we come to love in time. We are drawn to the illusion and stay for the reality that makes up the woman. But Faith did not suffer under the light of earnest scrutiny. Her skin and eyes, the way she moved even under the weight of her fears, were just so…flawless.”

Bam. Read them all friends, read them all.