experiences of Easy Rawlins, while exploring the
dynamics of economical, political, and ethical is-
sues facing an urban black community. Another
crucial dimension of the seven-novel series is
the friendship between Easy and his best friend,
Raymond “Mouse” Alexander. Easy and Mouse
maintain a volatile relationship, the latter view-
ing the world as a hostile place where a violent
response guarantees survival and manhood. The
tension between the friends represents the anxi-
ety among black men, who constantly walk a line
of adherence to or confrontation with America’s
status quo.
The titles in the Easy Rawlins series appear to
be linked by references to colors, though the au-
thor insists that the colors hold no hidden sym-
bolic value: Devil in a Blue Dress (1990), A Red
Death (1991), White Butterfly (1992), Black Betty
(1994), A Little Yellow Dog (1996), Gone Fishin’
(1997), and Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002). Gone
Fishin’, though published later in the series, sits
chronologically at the beginning of the easy Rawl-
ins saga, as it presents Easy and Mouse in their late
teens in Texas, while the remaining stories are set
in Los Angeles. Devil in the Blue Dress, published
first, won public accolades from then-president
Bill Clinton, who identified Mosley as his favor-
ite writer; it was the only novel in the series to be
made into a feature film, in 1995.
Well-suited for the detective genre, Mosley in-
troduces a different black hero in the form of Fear-
less Jones (2001), the title character of a novel set
in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Jones is a gutsy, in-
tuitive man who can navigate city streets and hid-
den dangers. In his quest to locate missing Swiss
bonds, Fearless unites with his friend Paris Min-
ton, a bookstore owner and intellectual who also
serves as the narrator for the novel. A reflective
everyman, Minton’s cautious nature complements
Jones’s fierceness and acuity for survival.
Although financially successful with his detec-
tive novels, Mosley has ventured beyond the niche
of the detective genre. In 1995, he published R L’s
Dream, a novel that highlighted the character
Soupspoon Wise, a black musician from Missis-
sippi. Soupspoon makes his way to Manhattan,
where he attempts to survive cancer, economic
hardships, and an unusual interracial relationship
and to nurture his passion for his music.
In another journey from the detective world,
Mosley tackles science fiction in Blue Light (1998)
and Futureland (2001). Blue Light is a novel in
which a mysterious light beam streaks across the
universe, transforming the humans touched by its
energy. Anointing those humans with the abilities
of prophecy and knowledge, the result is a minor-
ity of humans with extraterrestrial powers who
become targeted by those without them. In Future-
land, Mosley presents nine short stories that are
linked by the environment of accelerated technol-
ogy. Although the critical and popular response to
Mosley’s science fiction has not equaled the praise
for his detective fiction, he has nonetheless dem-
onstrated his skills at crafting works that are not
limited to one particular category.
This proficiency at writing popular fiction
across genre lines is further demonstrated with two
other books—Always Outnumbered, Always Out-
gunned (1997) and Walkin the Dog (1999). In these
two collections of short stories, Mosley returns to
the streets of Los Angeles with a protagonist who
might be best called an antihero. Both collections
focus on Socrates Fortlow, a black ex-con in his
50s who, returning to the community of Watts,
attempts to reconstruct a material and spiritual
life. In the first book of stories, Socrates discov-
ers that after 27 years in prison, his life experience
has given him a wisdom that he can pass along as
he chisels out a home and new friendships. In the
latter collection of stories, Socrates finds that the
brutality and hardships of the environment chip
away at his moral resolve. He once again confronts
his violent nature as the best means of enduring
the jungle of a world he did not create. In 1998, the
first collection of stories was turned into an HBO
movie of the same title with Laurence Fishburne
portraying Socrates Fortlow.
In addition to his diverse publications, Mosley
has been an outspoken critic of the publishing
practices that contribute to the limitations placed
on established authors and the exclusion of new
writers. In 1997 he made a bold statement by de-370 Mosley, Walter