Little Scarlet: An Easy Rawlins Novel by Walter Mosley

By Rawlins McKinneyAugust 26, 2004 Issue

For those of you who know who Walter Mosley is but have not read any of his books because you don’t like the detective/mystery genre, Little Scarlet offers an opportunity to get outside your box. Be forewarned, though. You’re taking a chance that could keep you outside for a long time. This prolific author has written sixteen other works of fiction as well as two non-fiction books.

Mosley’s protagonist, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, is not a licensed private eye. The sign on his office says research and delivery. His other job is supervising senior head custodian at Sojourner Truth Junior High School.

The book’s plot has very little mystery to it. The reader pretty much gets the straight scoop as the story unfolds. There are no tricks and few surprises. It is still a page-turner.

Little Scarlet opens with the 45-year-old Easy in his office. It is permeated with the stench of burned plastic and wood ash, the residual of five days of the 1965 Watts uprising. An unkempt white man who identifies himself as Detective Melvin Suggs of the LAPD confronts him. The police want Easy to help with a “case that needs solving outside of the public eye.” A white man was pulled out of his car in Watts and beaten. He was rescued and then given shelter by a black woman. Later she is found murdered. The authorities fear that a black woman’s killing by a white man will scuttle the fragile Watts truce. Suggs tells Easy that they need him to investigate because “ a white policeman looking into anything down in Watts right now will only draw attention to something we need kept quiet.” Easy refuses to commit himself until Suggs says he’s sure if he could talk to a few of his clients he could come up with enough to prosecute him for doing private detective work without a license. Easy very wisely convinces the LAPD to give him a letter from the deputy commissioner confirming he is working for the police and should not be hindered.

Mosley’s minimalist prose moves the story well. But there is something else more compelling than the plot. The first person narrative takes us where very few white people have been. An old blues music axiom says you can’t sing the blues unless you lived them. But you can come close to feeling the blues if you hear the right song sung by the right singer. Easy Rawlins is the right singer for the right song. He takes us through the street talk as well as the unwritten codes of behavior separating coolness from instant hurt or death.

Easy is a black World War Two veteran who returns to the racism of post-war America. He grew up in the racist South. The forced subjugation to White America has had a profound effect on his psychic makeup. He appears fragile, dangerously close to the brink. He could very easily have participated in the rioting and looting but he does not. He has overcome his past boozing and womanizing; he no longer drinks and in Little Scarlet he rejects the advances of two sexy women. He calls his family “makeshift.” He has adopted two at-risk children. Jesus, now a teenager, came to live with Rawlins when he was five and before then had never spoken a word. He took in 10-year-old Feather when she was eight months old. Her mother was a white stripper and her father was, in Rawlins’ words, “someone like me.” His live-in lover, Bonnie, is his stabilizer. Even if it is makeshift, this is a bonded family. They all love and respect each other—except for Frenchie, Feather’s little yellow dog who Easy is sure— dreams every night “about ripping out my throat.”

When Easy gets his letter from the LAPD, he realizes it is far more than a pass; it represents the cusp of an era of power he has never known. The Watts uprising was a warning the black community would no longer tolerate the overload of injustices without striking back. But he takes it a step further when realizes he has “the man” in an almost obsequious position. But he has the sense to realize this advantage puts him in danger. The cops demonstrate an eagerness to put him back in his place if given only a scintilla of justification.

Easy also walks a tightrope with his best friend, Mouse. Mouse is one scary character. Despite his size, Easy knows “Mouse was always ready to arrange a meeting with Death.” Rawlins finds himself in a truck hauling looted goods to Mouse’s warehouse where Mouse and his partner in this particular criminal enterprise come close to having it out in the cab of truck. Easy has to carefully defuse the situation preventing Mouse from turning on him or killing his partner who is driving the truck.

Situations like this, along with the inner tensions and demons that torment Easy Rawlins, do indeed make this not exactly-a-mystery/detective/story a page turner nonetheless.

Little Scarlet, Little, Brown and Company 306 pages, available at all booksellers and local libraries.

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