I’ve been blogging for over two years and somehow this is the first book by a Black author I’ve reviewed, which definitely says something about the lack of diversity found in detective fiction. For a genre of literature where women authors have actually been for a large part in the forefront, there hasn’t been much inclusion for other minorities. Of course there are some examples: gay couples who wrote together under a pseudonym like Roger Scarlett or Patrick Quentin; Native American author Todd Downing, or pioneering author or hard-boiled detection Walter Mosley, whose debut novel is the subject of this review. I think that in recent years we’ve been more successful in lifting up lost voices of GAD through reprints and discussion (such as Library of Congress Crime Classics’ reissue of Rudolph Fisher’s The Conjure-Man Dies,) as well as paving the way for new mystery and crime fiction authors of all backgrounds.
Of course I didn’t read Devil in a Blue Dress for this reason only. It’s been on my TBR list for quite a while. It’s on the Mystery Writers of America’s Top 100, has gotten rave reviews since its release in 1990 as a masterpiece of private-eye noir, and was adapted into a successful 1995 film directed by Carl Franklin, starring Denzel Washington and Don Cheadle (the latter in his breakout role!) Thankfully I had the pleasure of reading this in a couple of long chunks thanks to a brief excursion to Virginia, and was really able to sink my teeth into the world of Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins and 1940s Los Angeles.
Interestingly, when Devil in a Blue Dress begins Easy has not begun his career as a private detective but rather has just been laid off from his job putting together airplanes for testing purposes. Before this he served in WWII, which provided him with a dose of PTSD, an acute sense of the systemic racism segregating him from his own life goals, and a physical voice of reason which comes to him in times of danger. He only comes to begin his first private-eye job when his friend Joppy, who runs a ramshackle bar, introduces Easy to his white “friend” DeWitt Albright. Although Easy is immediately suspicious about Albright’s cold demeanor and personality, he accepts his request to give him any information Easy can find about the whereabouts of a white woman named Daphne Monet, who is known to frequent predominantly Black jazz clubs.
Easy begins to ask around the very clubs he himself goes to, but quickly finds himself wrapped up in two murders, with the police suspecting him as the culprit, an increase in sociopathic behavior on Albright’s part, a web of lies involving the L. A. mayoral race and bootlegging, and Daphne Monet’s own seductive ways. It will take a lot of detective work—and the arrival of Easy’s old buddy from Houston, the trigger-happy Mouse—to get to the bottom of this.
Much of the critical praise that Walter Mosley has gotten since the release of his debut novel, focuses on his abilities not just as a mystery writer but a literary author as well. In fact, Mosley did not really consider himself a crime fiction author until he wrote Devil in a Blue Dress and was given a series deal by his publisher. It was clear to me when reading this book that Mosley is indeed not just a skilled plotter of hard-boiled crime stories, but has a terse and poetic way with words. Noir and hard-boiled crime fiction has always had a tradition of ornate yet toned prose, and Mosley is no exception to this. From his descriptions of people and places, to more metaphorical passages, his writing brings an extra layer of depth and beauty to Easy Rawlins’ narration, such as in wonderfully evocative passages like this:
I felt something deep down in me, something dark like jazz when it reminds you that death is waiting.
“Death,” the saxophone rasps. But, really, I didn’t care.
Devil in a Blue Dress, Chapter 25
These descriptive powers are a great help in Mosley’s incredible recreation of life in 1940s Los Angeles and its many Black neighborhoods of the time. Mosley includes much of the good and the bad; joyful jazz clubs and personal hopes of prosperity are mixed with the realities of poverty and police brutality. However, what really makes the setting here shine is that while Mosley shows and acknowledges the effects of systemic racism in this setting, he does not overly emphasize it, choosing rather to show the lives he portrays just as they are. His portrayal of Black lives in this time and place celebrates the minute details and occurrences that are universal among humans:
John’s place was a speakeasy before they repealed Prohibition. But by 1948 we had legitimate bars all over L.A. John liked the speakeasy business though, and he had been in so much trouble with the law that City Hall wouldn’t have given him a license to drive, much less to sell liquor. So John kept paying off the police and running an illegal nightclub through the back door of a little market at the corner of Central Avenue and Eighty-ninth Place. You could walk into that store any evening up until three in the morning to find Hattie Parsons sitting behind the candy counter. They didn’t have many groceries, and no fresh produce or dairy goods, but she’d sell you what was there and if you knew the right words, or were a regular, then she’d let you in the club through the back door. But if you thought that you should be able to get in on account of your name, or your clothes or maybe your bankbook, well, Hattie kept a straight razor in her apron pocket and her nephew, Junior Fornay, sat right behind the door.
Devil in a Blue Dress, Chapter 4
What struck me most about Mosley’s descriptive abilities is that, while there is something of a difference when a scene is set in a Black locale versus a white one, every part of the setting is still given a noir treatment, a dark patina of intrigue and cigarette smoke left over Los Angeles. This is something I am confident in saying that Mosley has over Chandler in describing L.A.: both have the way with words, but Mosley is able to use that to engender multiple different areas and cultures of the city, which is less present in the Philip Marlowe novels.
The characters that Mosley populates this Los Angeles with are not necessarily as distinctly identified by their characteristics and appearances as with their hopes and aspirations. Of course most of the focus in terms of character is put on the narrator and private eye, Easy Rawlins. Rawlins easily escapes the common stereotypes of hard-boiled detectives (womanizing, unemotional, grizzled) as Mosley focuses more on his dreams of upward societal mobility—acquiring real estate and possibly starting a family one day—than with any wish to firmly establish himself as a detective. Easy is only pushed into his first private eye job as a favor to help him through a period of unemployment, and he gradually finds that life has trained him perfectly for this occupation. His knowledge of the criminal underground and keen sense of self-protection from his upbringing in Houston’s Fifth Ward, along with his insights into human nature, make him a natural. Yet (as with many hard-boiled heroes) detection is by no means a passion, only a job to keep the bills coming. For Easy, though, the P.I. business becomes a beacon of hope, a way to become self-sustainable and achieve his long-term goals without a racist boss or system keeping him down. For many of the memorable supporting characters, this idea of finding a basis for one’s goals in the identifiable stock characters of the noir genre emerges as a theme: for the funny but scarily bloodthirsty Mouse Alexander, becoming Easy’s sidekick in the second half of the novel allows him to continue his desires for self-reliance; for the seductive and subdued Daphne Monet, a life as a femme fatale allows her to find a place in a world she has never felt she belonged in; for the police detective Miller and Mason, the role of the unhelpful police allows them to fulfill their racist fantasies of violence. Make no mistake, it is these characters that form the bridge between the setting, plot, and themes of race and identity which encompass Devil in a Blue Dress.
I always try to judge plotting differently with noir and hard-boiled works than I do with fair-play detection, since GAD plotting focuses on cluing and a Swiss-watch-like delicacy, whereas with noir the plot is often window dressing for that classic noir atmosphere and characterization. With Devil in a Blue Dress, though, the plot does not only (or even chiefly) serve this purpose. Easy’s quest to find Daphne Money and figure out the secrets of her elusiveness is not just a way for Mosley to explore this era of Los Angeles and Watts, but is itself a basis to explore Easy’s origin story (the life in Houston he fled from,) and to show Easy’s discovery of the occupation that can finally allow him the modicum of independence and comfort he has always dreamed of. By no means a rags-to-riches story, but certainly a success story, disguised as a murder mystery. With this outlook it is noteworthy that the novel does not end on a downcast note like so many hard-boiled stories, but quite optimistically, as Easy looks not back on his regrets with the case but forward to his future endeavors and life.
The actual mystery itself has its own merits. While there are multiple murders (most happening off-page before and during Easy’s investigation or during the violent climactic scene,) the main mystery is clearly the secret behind Daphne Monet. Easy’s original job is just to find her whereabouts, but he slowly realizes he must figure out who she really is, why so many people are after her, and how nearly half a dozen deaths are connected to her. Added into this tangled web are Albright’s homicidal mania, the L.A. mayoral race, alcohol smuggling, and Mouse’s past crimes… a complex narrative worthy of its hard-boiled setting. The mystery of Daphne unfolds slowly—Mosley ingeniously doesn’t introduce her until halfway through the novel!—and is ultimately explained in a heart-pounding confrontation at the end. The crux of Daphne’s secrets relies on a twist that is easily guessable, but fits in perfectly with the book’s themes. The murders, characteristically for the subgenre, are much less unified than made out to be, and are mostly secondary to the main plot. Cluing is by no means a focus, and there is a pretty telling clue to the third murder that is blatantly withheld from the reader until its solution, but I do want to mention that there is one very nice clue to the first two murders that is in-your-face obvious but went over my head because I was so enamored by the writing and atmosphere! (ROT-13: Gur oehgnyvgl bs gur svefg gjb zheqref zngpuvat Wbccl’f cnfg pnerre nf n cebsrffvbany obkre.)
Devil in a Blue Dress just doesn’t feel like a debut novel; its maturity in tone, character, prose style, and genre conventions make it feel like Mosley had been writing noir for years. I can only give my highest praise to this novel, not just for breaking the ground of Black authors and stories in the mystery and crime genres, but because it is a nearly perfectly constructed story with a memorable and evocative setting. It seems generally agreed that the Easy Rawlins series only gets better from here. If Devil in a Blue Dress is the bar here, then I can’t wait to see how Mosley raises it with his later novels.
I did watch Carl Franklin’s 1995 film adaptation of Devil in a Blue Dress. Not only was I excited to see how it compared to the novel, but I am a huge fan of neo-noir films in general and I bought the Criterion Blu-Ray of it on sale sometime between when I bought the book and when I read it (clearly in anticipation of this very moment.) Just as the novel has become one of my favorite reads of this year, the film has quickly become one of my favorite watches of 2024. Director Franklin manages to give the movie tinges of a classic 40s noir, a modern neo-noir, and the rising style of Black Hollywood films. The cinematography beautifully captures a dark color palette and the realistic production design. Washington perfectly captures Easy’s personality with his mannerisms and the voice-over narration. The rest of the cast is phenomenal as well, especially Don Cheadle as Mouse, Tom Sizemore as Albright, and Jennifer Beals as Daphne. I didn’t think Sizemore as Albright would work for me since the way I imagined Albright looking was pretty different from Sizemore, but, having seen the film, Sizemore has become Albright for me. The screenplay, written by Franklin after Mosley’s attempt to adapt his own novel quickly proved unsuccessful, makes some changes—for instance changing who committed the third murder, omitting two other murders, and changing some of Daphne’s background—but it is all in furtherance of making the film work, and I did not once mind these changes. Franklin also notably added the classic line from Mouse, “If you ain’t want him killed, why’d you leave him with me?”, a quip which manages to perfectly encapsulate Mouse’s character in just a few short words. Overall the important parts of the plot stay exactly the same, and I saw this story that I had loved so much come to life. I was surprised to see that Elmer Bernstein composed the score, since I mostly associate him with older Hollywood films like The Magnificent Seven. I highly recommend the film as well as the novel; both are great works in their own regards.
New Horizons Challenge: 20 works out of 25
Author: Walter Mosley
The Challenge Requirements so far:
2/3 works translated into English
4/3 works written in English after 1970
3/2 works that are hardboiled or noir
3/2 works written by an American minority author
2/2 works with a musical setting
Other Reviews:
Tangled Yarns 