CANR
WORK TITLE: Gray Dawn
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.waltermosley.com/
CITY: New York
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: LRC March 2023
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born January 12, 1952 (some sources say January 1), in Los Angeles, CA; son of Leroy (a school custodian) and Ella (a school personnel clerk) Mosley; married Joy Kellman (a dancer and choreographer), 1987 (divorced, 2001).
EDUCATION:Attended Goddard College, 1971; Johnson State College, B.A., 1977; City College of the City University of New York, M.A., 1991, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Educator and writer. Founder of publishing degree program at City College of the City University of New York; associate producer of film Devil in a Blue Dress, TriStar, 1995, and executive producer of television program Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (also see below), HBO, 1998; artist in residence, New York University Africana Studies Institute, New York, NY, 1996; board member of Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and National Book Awards; former member of board of TransAfrica Forum. Also worked as a potter and as a computer programmer for corporations including Dean Witter, IBM, and Mobil Oil.
MEMBER:Mystery Writers of America (past president), Poetry Society of America (board member).
AWARDS:John Creasey Memorial Award, Crime Writers’ Association, Shamus Award for best first novel, Private Eye Writers of America, and Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination for best first novel, Mystery Writers of America, all 1991, for Devil in a Blue Dress; Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination for best novel, 1993, for White Butterfly; Literary Award for fiction, Black Caucus of the American Library Association, 1996, for R. L.’s Dream; O. Henry Award, 1996, for “The Thief”; Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Cleveland Foundation, 1998, for Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned; Grammy Award for best album notes, Recording Academy, 2001, for Richard Pryor … And It’s Deep, Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-1992); Lifetime Achievement Award, PEN USA, 2004; Nero Award, Nero Wolfe Society, 2004, for Fear Itself; Risktaker Award, Sundance Institute, 2005; Lifetime Achievement Award of the Twenty-First Annual Celebration of Black Writing, Art Sanctuary of Philadelphia, 2005; TransAfrica International Literary Prize; doctorate from City College of the City University of New York; Grand Master, Mystery Writers of America, Edgar Allan Poe Awards, 2016; Edgar Allan Poe Award, Best Novel, 2019, for Down the River unto the Sea; Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, National Book Foundation, 2020; Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, 2020; Outstanding Literary Work, NAACP Image Award, 2021, for The Awkward Black Man; Sankofa Freedom Award, 2022; Diamond Dagger Award, Crime Writers Association, 2023.
WRITINGS
Contributor of fiction and nonfiction in numerous publications, including the New Yorker, Playboy, and the Nation. Author of album liner notes for Richard Pryor … And It’s Deep, Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-92), 2002; author of six-part e-book comic series The Thing, illustrated by Tom Reilly and published by Marvel in 2021 and 2022. Author’s works have been translated into twenty-five languages.
Several of Mosley’s books have been adapted for film and television including 1995’s Devil in a Blue Dress, starring Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, and Jennifer Beals, and the 1998 HBO production of Always Outnumbered, starring Laurence Fishburne and Natalie Cole; he wrote seven episodes of the television series Snowfall for FX between 2018 and 2023; he cowrote the adaptation of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey for AppleTV+ in 2022 and The Man in My Basement for Hulu in 2025.
SIDELIGHTS
Walter Mosley’s widely praised detective stories and novels include a series of hard-boiled detective tales featuring Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, who reluctantly gets drawn into investigations that lead him through the tough streets of predominantly African American Los Angeles. There, Easy operates in a kind of gray area, where moral and ethical certainties are hard to decipher. Mosley has also written stand-alone novels and other series featuring conflicted protagonists making their way in through American society. Mosley has published over thirty books in a variety of genres, from mystery fiction and mystery nonfiction, to science fiction, politics, and memoir.
Mosley had ambitions other than writing early in his career. Born in Los Angeles, he made his way to the East Coast, where he began his professional life as a computer programmer. Then one day, as he told D.J.R. Bruckner in the New York Times, “I wrote out a sentence about people on a back porch in Louisiana. I don’t know where it came from. I liked it. It spoke to me.” From that moment, he defined himself as a writer and fulfilled the dream of many would-be authors bound to an office: he quit to devote his full attention to his craft. He continues to write the way he began: “First there is a sentence. Then characters start coming in.”
In 1990, readers first met Mosley’s Easy Rawlins and his short-tempered sidekick, Mouse, in Devil in a Blue Dress. The novel is set in 1948, when many African American World War II veterans, like Easy, found jobs in the area’s booming aircraft industry. When Easy loses his job, he grows concerned about the source of his next mortgage payment—until he is introduced to a wealthy white man who offers him a way to make some quick cash: he will pay Easy one hundred dollars to locate a beautiful blonde woman named Daphne Monet, who is known to frequent jazz clubs in the area. Easy takes the job but soon realizes that the task is far more dangerous than he imagined. Reviewing Devil in a Blue Dress in Publishers Weekly, Sybil Steinberg wrote that “the language is hard-boiled … and the portrait of black city life gritty and real.”
Mosley followed Devil in a Blue Dress with A Red Death, set five years later. In the sequel, Easy has used stolen money to buy a couple of apartment buildings and is enjoying the life of a property owner. But he gets into a jam with the Internal Revenue Service, and his only way out is to cooperate with the FBI by spying on a union organizer suspected of being a communist. Again, he gets mired in complications as he tries to make sense out of a dark underworld of extortion and murder. “Mosley’s second novel … confirms the advent of an extraordinary storyteller,” remarked a contributor in Publishers Weekly.
Mosley’s third novel, White Butterfly, flashes forward to 1956. Easy is married and has a new baby, and his businesses are going well. When three young African American women—“good-time girls”—are brutally slain, the crimes are barely reported. But when a white student at the University of California, Los Angeles meets a similar death, the serial killings finally make headlines. Easy is hired by the police to help investigate. His inquiries take him through bars, rib joints, and flophouses, until he makes the startling discovery that the latest victim, the daughter of a city official, was a stripper, known by her fans as the “White Butterfly.” Nothing in the novel is as it appears, but Easy sorts through the corruption and deception to solve the mystery, at a terrible price to his personal life. Observer correspondent Nicci Gerrard commented: “In Mosley’s fictional world, there’s no such thing as innocence. There’s hope (which Mosley calls naivete), and anger (which Mosley calls sense). There’s law (white law), cops (the real criminals) and justice (which exists only in a heaven he doesn’t believe in). There’s love (which he calls heartache), and trying (failure), and then, of course, there’s trouble.”
By the time Mosley’s next Rawlins novel, Black Betty, was published in 1994, the author had earned an important endorsement. President Bill Clinton let it be known that Mosley was one of his favorite writers and the “Easy Rawlins” books among his favorite reading. Not surprisingly, Black Betty sold one hundred thousand copies in hardcover and helped to earn Mosley a multi-book contract for further novels in the series. As the action in Black Betty commences, Easy is well into midlife and the 1960s are in full swing. Once again in need of extra money, this time to help support two street children he has taken in, Rawlins agrees to search for a woman he knew back in Houston named Black Betty. A Publishers Weekly contributor called Black Betty “crime fiction at its distinguished best.”
Mosley left his popular detective behind temporarily in 1995 to publish his first non-genre novel, R.L.’s Dream. Set in New York City in the late 1980s, the novel explores an unconventional friendship struck in hard times and offers meditations on blues music, especially the unparalleled work of Robert “R.L.” Johnson. The story unfolds when Atwater “Soupspoon” Wise, dying of cancer and evicted from his skid row apartment for nonpayment of rent, is taken in by a young white neighbor named Kiki Waters, who has troubles of her own. R.L.’s Dream received much praise from critics. Entertainment Weekly contributor Tom De Haven called the book a “beautiful little masterpiece, and one probably best read while listening, very late at night, to Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings.” In the San Francisco Review of Books, Paula L. Woods dubbed the novel “a mesmerizing and redemptive tale of friendship, love, and forgiveness … without doubt, the author’s finest achievement to date, a rich literary gumbo with blues-tinged rhythms that make it a joy to read and a book to remember.” A Publishers Weekly correspondent observed that in R.L.’s Dream, Mosley’s prose “achieves a constant level of dark poetry” and concluded that the book is “a deeply moving creation of two extraordinary people who achieve a powerful humanity where it would seem almost impossible it should exist.”
Mosley returned to the character of Easy Rawlins in A Little Yellow Dog. Easy, now working as a school custodian, finds himself the subject of a murder investigation after he discovers a body in the school’s garden. People contributor Pam Lambert noted that “the vibrant black community is vividly evoked, and [Mosley’s] reluctant hero is as ingratiating as ever.” Gone Fishin’, set during the 1930s, examines the lifelong bond that formed between Easy and Mouse as young men. J. D. Reed, in People, called Gone Fishin’ “disturbing, elegant, magical.”
In 2002 Mosley published Bad Boy Brawly Brown, the first “Easy Rawlins” novel in five years. In the work, an old friend asks Easy to locate a young man, Brawley Brown, who has joined an underground political group, the Urban Revolutionary Party. Reluctantly, Easy tackles the job but quickly finds himself in a tangled web of robbery and murder. “As always, Mosley illuminates time and place with a precision few writers can match whatever genre they choose,” stated a Publishers Weekly critic. According to Entertainment Weekly reviewer Troy Patterson, “much of the richness of Bad Boy Brawly Brown derives from Mosley’s skill at connecting the dots between the genre conventions and the particular texture of a life. In Rawlins, the private eye’s typical baggy-eyed existentialism—the cynicism and weariness, the spiritual isolation—is married to blue-collar values and a black man’s alienation.”
The 2004 novel Little Scarlet is set in 1965, immediately after the Watts riots. When an African American woman is murdered, allegedly by a white man, the Los Angeles police employ Easy to investigate the case without stirring the flames of racial unrest. As People reviewer Champ Clark noted: “ Little Scarlet focuses on race in a way that gives the book a surprising resonance.”
In 2005, Mosley published two books: 47 and Cinnamon Kiss. 47 was Mosley’s first young adult novel. The narrator is a slave boy, branded simply “47” by his master, who works on a plantation in Georgia. There he meets Tall John, an extraterrestrial masquerading as a runaway slave, who is looking for 47 to help him free the slaves as well as save the world from unearthly creatures. “The sections of 47 that deal with slave life are powerfully described and haunting. … I found the [science fiction] plot less compelling,” stated Paula Rohrlick in Kliatt. However, a Publishers Weekly contributor wrote: “This thought-provoking, genre-bending account of one slave’s emancipation … makes for harrowing reading.”
Easy Rawlins returns in Cinnamon Kiss, set in the 1960s when the hippie subculture was on the rise. Easy takes on a job to earn money so he can afford treatment for his daughter who is diagnosed with a rare blood disease. He must travel to San Francisco to search for a missing lawyer and his assistant named Cinnamon Cargill. “The historical moment is less vivid—the hippie encounters are mostly peripheral—but the human drama is more highly charged than ever,” commented Bill Ott in Booklist. Roger A. Berger wrote in Library Journal: “Mosley has never been a great literary stylist, but he’s a good writer of detective fiction.”
Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories is a short story collection featuring Mosley’s best-known character. The stories are designed to interlock based on Easy’s search for his wayward friend, Mouse, who eventually dies. As a result, the stories form a sort of novella as Easy deals with his midlife crisis while becoming involved in the investigation of murderers, cons, and arsonists. “In the hands of a lesser writer, these seven joined stories would fall to gimmickry, a mockery of those continuous novels written by several authors and linked only by a publisher’s marketing department,” wrote Oline H. Cogdill in the South Florida Sentinel. “But Mosley makes it look easy. He always has.” A contributor to the Detroit Free Press commented about Easy: “What makes the stories fascinating is the lure of Mouse’s world for this decent but damaged man.”
Mosley introduced a new protagonist in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. Socrates Fortlow, after spending twenty-seven years in an Indiana prison for rape and murder, is now a free man living in the largely African American Watts section of Los Angeles and trying to lead a moral life. Tough yet philosophical and compassionate, he offers help to a variety of friends and acquaintances—a troubled youth, a cancer patient, an injured dog—and forges relationships with neighbors working for the betterment of their community. The interconnected short stories in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned form a “not-quite novel,” in the words of a Publishers Weekly contributor, who found the volume’s best feature to be “its indelible vision of ‘poor men living on the edge of mayhem.’” Library Journal reviewer Lawrence Rungren thought the book occasionally “a bit contrived or didactic,” but added that the main character’s appeal made up for these faults. Booklist commentator Bill Ott lauded Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned as “hard-hitting, unrelenting, poignant short fiction” and remarked that Fortlow, unlike Rawlins, “is a fantasy-free hero.”
Socrates takes center stage again in Walkin’ the Dog, which also takes the form of related short stories. This book finds the ex-con somewhat materially better off than in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, but still dealing with moral questions. This is evident when, at one point, he launches a protest against police brutality. Some reviewers noted that Mosley manages to avoid the problems sometimes associated with “message” fiction by showing Socrates’s activism as arising naturally from his character. New York Times Book Review contributor Adam Goodheart opined that Mosley sometimes veers into sentimentalism, but added: “More often, though, he lets his characters make their own mistakes, and narrates their rough lives in a gentle voice.” Goodheart further observed that “like his Athenian namesake, Socrates Fortlow is a streetwise philosopher, always prodding skeptically at others’ certainties, offering more questions than answers.” The book’s concern with social issues also brought its main character comparisons with Tom Joad, hero of John Steinbeck’s Depression-era saga The Grapes of Wrath. “There is a Steinbeck-esque edge to Fortlow’s musings on black vs. white and rich vs. poor, and he displays shades of Tom Joad, another convicted killer who desires a better world,” commented Michael Rogers in Library Journal.
Mosley ventured into another genre, science fiction, in Blue Light. The novel’s action takes place in 1965, when numerous people in the San Francisco Bay area of California are struck by strange rays of blue light that endow them with superhuman powers. These people, dubbed “blues,” are then called upon to fight a force of pure evil. The leading character is a man of mixed racial heritage—as is Mosley, the son of a white Jewish mother and an African American father—but along the way, racial distinctions blur, as do gender, class, and other differences. Mosley’s change of pace drew mixed reviews. Library Journal reviewer Michael Rogers, while acknowledging that Blue Light represents a departure that might put off Mosley’s regular readers, pronounced it “a beautifully written, deeply spiritual novel.”
In 2001, Mosley published a second work of science fiction titled Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World. These interrelated stories together depict an oppressive future, where trials are conducted so efficiently by a computer that one session can include all stages of justice from trial to sentencing to execution. Drugs are used to manage jailed prisoners, and unemployed workers must sleep in underground tubes. A huge corporation wields the power of a nation and spreads its own religion. Again Mosley received mixed reviews for his science fiction work. Writing for Kirkus Reviews, one critic described Futureland as “a vivid, exciting and, on the whole, well-executed” work. A Publishers Weekly contributor, on the other hand, wrote that “heavy-handed plotting and unconvincing extrapolation weaken the collection’s earnest social message.” Weighing in on the other side of the debate, Tony Lindsay in Black Issues Book Review felt that “Mosley holds us from page-to-page, filling our minds with wonder and provoking thought.” According to Lindsay, “This one should not be missed.”
The Wave, a novel with science fiction elements, was published in 2006. In the story, Errol Porter starts receiving phone calls that sound like they are from his father, who has been deceased for nine years. Errol meets the caller and learns that it is not his father, but the embodiment of his father’s memories, who is part of the “wave” colony created when a meteor crashed to earth over a billion years ago. Sara Tompson, reviewing the book in Library Journal, called it “taut” and added that it “will hold readers’ interest.”
With the publication of Fearless Jones in 2001, Mosley introduced another mystery series. Set in 1950s Los Angeles, Fearless Jones features the duo of Paris Minton, a timid bookstore owner, and his friend Fearless Jones, a World War II veteran. After Paris encounters the seductive but dangerous Elana Love, he calls upon Fearless to help him out of trouble. A Publishers Weekly contributor called the novel “a violent, heroic, and classic piece of noir fiction.” In Fear Itself, a 2003 work, Paris and Fearless search for a missing man whose disappearance may be linked to a mysterious family diary. According to Time contributor Lev Grossman, “ Fear Itself is a seedy, ever receding labyrinth of petty deceptions, dark desires, and unspeakable deeds.”
In Fear of the Dark, Mosley once again features Paris and Fearless. In this novel, Paris’s cousin Ulysses comes to him for help in getting out of a blackmail scheme. When Ulysses disappears, Paris and Fearless set out to find him. A contributor to O, the Oprah Magazine commented that the author is able to take the tale of loser and turn it “into a kind of Homeric epic.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer called Fear of the Dark “as entertaining as its predecessors.”
In his 2006 novel Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel, Mosley presents an erotic novel in which Cordel Carmel discovers his girlfriend, Joelle, being sodomized by a white man they both know named Johnny Fry. Although Cordel sees the tryst taking place, Joelle and Johnny do not know that he is aware of it. Cordel then becomes enamored with porn videos, falling in love with porn star Sisypha. The novel follows Cordel as he has a number of sexual encounters, including one with Sisypha, and eventually confronts Johnny about what he has seen. New York contributor Vikram Chandra noted that “Mosley proves he’s our most recklessly ambitious popular author.”
In 2006, Mosley published the novel Fortunate Son, about two boys who, despite their differences, are practically brothers. Eric is white, strong, and lives a life of good fortune. Tommy, born with health problems, is African American, impoverished, but eternally optimistic. When they are reunited after years of not seeing each other, the result is “breathtaking,” according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. The same reviewer wrote: “Mosley shows how a certain kind of inarticulate, carnal, involuntary affection transcends just about anything.”
The Man in My Basement is a story about an African American man who has a white man in a cage in the basement. The captor, Charles Blakely, has been fired from his bank job for stealing when Anniston Bennet comes to his door. The stranger offers Charles fifty thousand dollars to live in his basement for the next two months. Before long, Charles realizes that Anniston does not want to just live in his basement but to become Charles’s prisoner as part of an effort to pay a debt for past wrongs. “The men’s conversations signal a constantly shifting of power between the two as Charles, emboldened with a new respect for his history, grows stronger and Anniston, confessing his past, grows weaker,” wrote Oline H. Cogdill in the South Florida Sentinel.
Mosley has occasionally produced nonfiction, serving as coeditor of Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems, in which African American intellectuals discuss various social ills, and writing a critique of capitalism in Workin’ on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History. But he seeks to explore the problems of modern life in his fiction as well. In his detective stories, his aim is less to create a memorable gumshoe than it is to explore the ethical dilemmas that the character constantly faces. As Mosley told New York Times contributor D.J.R. Bruckner, “Mysteries, stories about crime, about detectives, are the ones that really ask the existentialist questions such as ‘How do I act in an imperfect world when I want to be perfect?’ I’m not really into clues and that sort of thing, although I do put them in my stories. I like the moral questions.”
In What Next: A Memoir toward World Peace, Mosley offers a political tome on how African Americans, who have a unique understanding of the wrongs society can inflict on individuals and groups, can help work toward world peace. The author writes of his father’s contribution in World War II and draws on both his father’s and grandfather’s folk wisdom to discuss how he wants to live in a world of spiritual harmony. The author includes a list of core values that are important to live by in a peaceful world, and provides suggestions for the African American community to organize into grassroots groups to address various issues of world peace. “ What Next is a heart-stirring, step-by-step explanation of African American powers and responsibilities to fathers, mothers, daughters and sons,” wrote Judy Simmons in Black Issues Book Review. “Readers will experience the love and reverence Walter Mosley has crafted into this encouragement affirmation of all humanity.”
Mosley turns his thoughts once again to politics and society in his book Life Out of Context: Which Includes a Proposal for the Non-Violent Takeover of the House of Representatives. In the book, Mosley talks of the American lack of context in viewing the world and its problems, and also chides Americans for their narrow-mindedness. The author goes on to make suggestions concerning how to help Americans see the world in context, from unconventional suggestions including giant video screens that show crises around the world, to creating a new political party to challenge the Democrats and Republicans. Hazel Rochman, writing in Booklist, noted that Life Out of Context is “sure to spark controversy.”
Mosley produced a writer’s guide with his book This Year You Write Your Novel, which provides pointers on writing a complete novel within one year. In a review in Booklist, David Pitt called This Year You Write Your Novel “gracefully written.”
With Blonde Faith, Mosley offers readers the tenth installment in his “Easy Rawlins” series. The book takes place in 1967, and the action revolves around the disappearance of three men. Pericles Tarr vanishes first. An inventory clerk, he is suspected to be dead, though there is no body. The next man to vanish, Mouse Alexander, is the one suspected of killing Tarr, making the LAPD especially interested in locating him. Finally, former Marine Christmas Black disappears, though Easy only discovers his disappearance when young Easter Dawn shows up on his front step. Christmas had adopted Easter, a bright Vietnamese orphan girl, and while the child had turned up at Easy’s before, this time there is more behind her wanderings. Easy soon learns that a group of soldiers are after Christmas. Even as Easy’s thoughts travel from one case to the next, they keep darting back to his Bonnie Shay, the flight attendant with whom he had recently ended a relationship. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews dubbed the book “familiar territory for both Mosley … and Easy, who sounds a lot more ancient than his forty-seven years.”
Diablerie is a short, serious novel about Ben Dibbuk, a forty-seven-year-old African American computer programmer living in New York City and working for a local bank. His wife, Mona, works for a trendy new magazine that shares its title with the book—a word that can mean something either evil or mischievous. Meanwhile, Ben supports his college-aged daughter at New York University, as well as his twenty-one year old Russian mistress, who has her own apartment and attends grad school. But Ben has a dark past, tinged with alcoholism and lost memories, and when it rises up to haunt him, he finds himself struggling to keep afloat in the face of a murder that he might very well have committed despite having no memory of doing so. A Publishers Weekly reviewer dubbed the book “Mosley at his deepest and best, scratching away the faces we wear to reveal the person behind the masks.” Tom Callahan, writing on Bookreporter.com, said that “ Diablerie is even scarier than the mysteries for which Mosley is famous. Here, he has written a novel about real people with real weaknesses and vulnerabilities who miscalculate when everything is on the line.”
In The Tempest Tales, Mosley tells the story of Tempest Landry, who is shot and killed while walking up the street in Harlem when a police officer mistakes him for the armed robber whom he was chasing. Arriving at the pearly gates, Tempest faces St. Peter, who informs him he is being sent to hell. Although Heaven is well aware that Tempest had no connection to the robber for whom he was mistaken, they have a long list of other sins they claim to be resting on his shoulders, including stabbing a boy at school who was on the verge of shooting him, buying his sick aunt groceries with money he stole from the church, and telling lies that resulted in a hardened criminal who had raped and killed going to prison for a crime that he did not commit. Tempest finds fault with St. Peter’s reasoning, and due to the dispute, finds himself sent back to Earth to continue his life until a proper audit of the situation can be completed. Joshua Angel, a heavenly accountant of sorts, is sent along to keep an eye on him in the meantime. Over the course of the book, Tempest and Joshua face different problems, including Tempest’s wife having met another man, and Joshua finding himself drawn to a human woman. A Kirkus Reviews contributor had mixed feelings regarding the book, dubbing it “a classic case of overreaching, though one that’s often moving and provoking.”
Returning to his “Socrates Fortlow” series after a nine-year hiatus, Mosley published The Right Mistake: The Further Philosophical Investigations of Socrates Fortlow in 2008. This novel follows the ex-convict as he organizes a discussion center, where he gathers people from widely varied walks of life, legal and illegal, to consider ways of generating positive change in themselves and their community. Known as the Thinkers, they are black, white, and Asian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist, and while their differences lead to plenty of arguments, the group also advances in mutual respect and community impact. At the same time, tension rises between Fortlow’s group and the police, who suspect criminal activity.
Several critics expressed appreciation for Mosley’s story, although some observed weaknesses. Reviewing The Right Mistake for Bookreporter.com, Max Falkowitz described it as “an engaging novel.” Allowing that “as a philosophical work The Right Mistake is lacking some meat,” he called Fortlow a “hero well worth rallying around” and commented that the novel “presents a superb populist vision of philosophy as something anyone can do to better themselves.” Thomas Curwen in the Los Angeles Times thought “the subtle but critical balance between drama and ideas seems slightly off.” In his opinion, “the story works best when Mosley gets his characters out on the street and paints his pictures of life in Watts.” On the Curled Up with a Good Book website, Sam Sattler acknowledged that “what happens among those attending the Thursday night meetings will likely be seen as wishful thinking by some readers,” but he maintained that it “is not impossible. … Mosley has filled The Right Mistake with the kinds of people that will have readers wanting to believe that what he describes might actually happen someday.” A Publishers Weekly contributor considered the novel “powerful and moving.”
In his 2009 novel, The Long Fall, Mosley introduces Leonid McGill, a middle-aged and formerly crooked private eye. Leonid’s resolve to reform is tested when he is hired to locate four men who later end up dead. Reviewers generally appreciated Mosley’s new protagonist. “Plotting has never been Mosley’s strong point,” commented a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “but McGill … may be his most compelling hero yet.” “Leonid, whose father was a communist and whose great-great grandfather was a slave master, joins Mosley’s cast of well-sculpted, complicated characters,” Oline Cogdill remarked in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
McGill returns in Mosley’s 2010 novel Known to Evil. While trying to pursue a case involving a young woman in whose apartment a murder has occurred, the detective also has to cope with issues in the lives of his friends and family members. Writing for the New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio commented that “the voice of the narrator … is what hooks us.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted the book’s “rich collection of individual scenes and people,” which the critic found “memorable,” but also described the “tangled plot” as “forgettable.” Keir Graff in Booklist perceived “a glaring flaw” in the novel: “From start to finish, McGill and his supporting cast don’t change.” In contrast, a writer for Publishers Weekly declared Known to Evil “excellent.” According to this reviewer, the novel is a “contemporary noir gem.”
In the third volume of the McGill series, When the Thrill Is Gone, the detective takes the case of a woman who says her rich husband wants to end her life. Though aware that she is not being honest with him, he goes ahead with the case and finds matters much more complicated than he expected. Family issues continue to provide ample distraction on the home front. “Mosley’s genius for characterization” proved noteworthy for Stasio in the New York Times Book Review. In a Library Journal critique, Jo Ann Vicarel remarked that “Mosley maintains interest until the end, when the plot fizzles out in a disappointing denouement.” Still, “despite its flaws,” Vicarel continued, the novel remains “enjoyable.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly took note of the “insights” Mosley incorporates into his book, concluding: “It’s the often surprising bonds of love and family that lift this raw, unsentimental novel.” David Pitt wrote in Booklist that “Mosley’s many fans will find plenty to keep them engaged here.”
Mosley published another stand-alone novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, in 2010. The title character is ninety-one years old and declining into dementia. He lives in a rat’s nest of an apartment in Los Angeles, occasionally visited by a grandnephew who helps him with errands and personal needs. When the grandnephew is killed, to be succeeded by a teenage female friend of the family, Grey seizes an opportunity she presents him to take an experimental drug that will clear his thinking but also lead to his death. The drug enables him to recover a fortune entrusted to him decades earlier, which he can then use to help his family. In a radio review posted on the All Things Considered website, Alan Cheuse termed it a “sweetheart of a novel fusing family, fable, science fiction and sociology.” A reviewer in the New Yorker drew attention to the “compassion and insight” of the novel while conceding that Grey’s relationship with the young woman, Robyn, also exhibits some “predictability and lack of progression.” For Dafna Izenberg, writing in Maclean’s, “the story’s true charm is in the bond between Ptolemy and Robyn,” which Izenberg regarded as “rendered true in Mosley’s prudent prose.” Similarly, noting “the earthy vitality of [Mosley’s] characters,” Stasio wrote in the New York Times Book Review that “the character study … is a tour de force.” Stasio also took particular notice of the “deeper meaning and higher purpose” Mosley invests in his story.
Mosley turns again to nonfiction in his 2011 book, Twelve Steps toward Political Revelation, in which he uses the metaphor of twelve-step programs to examine destructive behavior in American society. Mosley reaches back to his own problems with alcohol and nicotine addiction as a teenager and in his twenties to present a treatise on recovery from oppression. Mosley contends that self-destructive behavior is the result of major economic inequality in American society, and that the only way to counter such behavior is to create a more just society. One possible road to this solution is, according to Mosley, the Internet, which can break the log jam of the two-party system. He also calls for a maximum of ten percent profit on any goods that are sold.
A Kirkus Reviews contributor remained skeptical of Mosley’s reform plan, writing: “Mosley’s a bit short on specifics when it comes to precisely how his recommendations will bring about major change, … and his melodramatic rhetoric tends to obscure his solid ideas.” Similar criticism came from a Publishers Weekly reviewer who noted: “Mosley’s slim manifesto aims to foment an American ‘intellectual revolution,’ but it offers few original ideas toward realizing that end.” On the other hand, reviewing this treatise in Library Journal, Robert Bruce Slater felt that one’s own political slant notwithstanding, “it is refreshing to read a book on social issues written with the flair of a novelist.”
Mosley reprises his series protagonist Leonid McGill in the fourth series installment, All I Did Was Shoot My Man. Here McGill takes the case of Zella Grisham, who wants him to clear her of the theft of fifty-eight million dollars, for which she has served eight years in prison. McGill is, for once, certain of the innocence of his client, for it was he that framed her for the crime, working for the gambler who was responsible for the theft. But at the time, Zella seemed like a good choice to take the fall, for she worked in an office across the street from the Rutgers Assurance Corporation, site of the largest Wall Street robbery in history, and was headed to prison anyway for shooting her lover, Harry Tangelo, whom she caught in bed with her best friend. In the event, Zella served the time for taking part in this heist rather than for a crime of passion, which she swears she cannot remember committing. McGill is after some atonement now for his past misdeeds, including setting Zella up, but nothing comes easy in this case. To complicate matters, McGill’s personal life also intrudes. His wife, Katrina, is drinking herself into oblivion, while one son, Dimitri, is intent on setting up house with an ex-prostitute from Belarus, and another son, Twill, seems destined to become a criminal. Meanwhile, McGill’s father, who abandoned the family when McGill was just a boy, has come back to New York looking for a place in his son’s life. McGill’s powers of deduction and compassion are put the test this time.
Writing in the Boston Globe Online, James H. Burnett III noted: “The themes of guilt and atonement are a central feature of McGill’s life.” Burnett further observed: “There’s no question that [ All I Did Was Shoot My Man ] is the best book yet in the McGill series. The plot moves incredibly quickly. But it’s possible that even in a Mosley book’s hang-on-tight world there were too many twists and turns this time.” A similar criticism came from a Kirkus Reviews contributor who concluded that the novel is “overplotted even by Mosley’s standards, with precious little chance to savor each scene and speaker before they’re hustled offstage to make room for the next.” However, a Publishers Weekly reviewer had no such complaints, terming All I Did Was Shoot My Man a “complex, satisfying entry.” Booklist contributor Wes Lukowsky also commended this series addition, noting, “Mosley is a master, and this is among his best.”
Mosley revives the flipbook idea of the Ace Doubles that began publishing in the 1950s with his “Crosstown to Oblivion” series of speculative and science fiction novellas. Each installment has two novellas packaged back to back. The series launch, The Gift of Fire/On the Head of a Pin, features Prometheus stepping out of mythology onto the streets of South Central Los Angeles in the first tale, while in On the Head of a Pin an advancement in animatronics leads to unintended consequences in the film industry.
Reviewing this first installment in Booklist, David Pitt noted that the author appears to be in “experimental mode here, which could be either good news or bad for his fans, depending on their expectations.” A Kirkus Reviews critic thought that “fans of Mosley’s gumshoe noir books … will certainly wish to investigate.” Similarly, a Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that these speculative tales are “equally accessible to mystery and fantasy readers.”
The series continues with Merge/ Disciple, in which “both stories are solid,” according to Booklist reviewer Pitt. In Disciple a simple worker suddenly advances to CEO, while in Merge an alien offers a human a Faustian bargain. Pitt further noted that this series “could turn into something special.” Praise for the second installment also came from a Kirkus Reviews critic who concluded: “For thoughtful readers, the questions posed by the book are well worth pondering.” However, a Publishers Weekly reviewer was much less impressed with this series addition, commenting: “These tales are, alas, dull rather than thought provoking.”
Mosley’s series continues with Stepping Stone/Love Machine. Stepping Stone/Love Machine finds a man’s fantasies about a woman leading him to believe he is either the destroyer or savior of humanity. In Love Machine, a scientist who invents a machine that allows all humans to share thoughts is similarly faced with the quandary of whether he is god-like or an evil genius. Pitt noted in Booklist that “there is plenty here—both style and story—to satisfy readers of speculative fiction.”
Mosley offers a stand-alone novel in Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore, about a black porn queen who has to come to terms with her past life following the death of her husband. In this novel the author turns from mystery to a novel that “finds its intrigue in the profession of its well-developed main character,” according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. The book’s protagonist, Debbie Dare, is set on her soul-searching by the electrocution death of her philandering husband in a hot tub with young woman. This pushes Debbie over the edge; she decides she is getting out of the porn business, but it is easier to say it that accomplish it, as she learns, for now she is suddenly burdened with huge debts from her husband and there are mob goons out to collect the money.
Reviewing Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore in Library Journal, Ashanti White felt it would “appeal to readers who like their erotic fiction with a little depth.” A Kirkus Reviews critic voiced praise for the novel, dubbing it a “well-told redemption song about the most unlikely of heroines,” while Booklist contributor Pitt similarly felt this “could be the best thing Mosley has written in years, a deeply affecting story.” Likewise, Boston Globe Online writer Burnett noted: “In her painful struggle for a better life, Dare holds her own but manages to do even better after she accepts that few of those around her are real friends, and those that are also have ulterior motives. It is a world Mosley fans will find familiar.”
Mosley returns to his popular series protagonist, Easy Rawlings, in the 2013 Little Green, after a six-year hiatus from that series. In a New York Times Book Review interview, Mosley remarked on this break in the series: “I had to take some years away from the series because my writing about Easy was becoming, well … too easy. I needed to rebuild the fires under that continuing story about the black Southern migrant who recreated himself in the California sun.” At the conclusion of the previous Easy Rawlins novel, Blonde Faith, Easy drives his car off a cliff and the reader is left wondering if that is the end of the protagonist. In Little Green it is two months later in 1967, and Easy battles his way out of a coma from that accident, and is soon on his way to a new case when his buddy Mouse urges him to take on a missing persons case. The missing person is Mouse’s friend, Evander Noon, a black man known as Little Green, who has disappeared after dropping acid. Soon, Easy is up and out of bed, wandering the streets of Sunset Strip and taking in the scene of the counterculture. Easy shows Little Green’s picture around and soon is caught up in a web of murder and mayhem, made all the more difficult because Easy has not quite got his old energy back after the accident. But the Southern herbalist Mama Jo, who helped out Mouse in Bad Boy Brawly Brown, comes to Easy’s rescue with her high octane elixir, Gator’s Blood.
Reviewing Little Green in the Houston Chronicle Online, P.G. Koch praised the “familiar … mix of hardboiled detective narrative and social philosophizing on African American life that makes Easy such an enduring figure and his comeback so welcome.” Booklist critic Bill Ott also had praise for this Easy Rawlins comeback, noting “Mosley returns here to doing what he does best.” Likewise, a Publishers Weekly writer concluded: “If there were an Edgar for best comeback player, Easy Rawlins would be a shoo-in.”
Easy Rawlins is at work again in the novel, Rose Gold, also set in 1967. This tale of kidnapping harkens back to the Patty Hearst case of that era. In Mosley’s story, ex-boxer Uhuru Nolica has formed a radical black cell, Scorched Earth, and kidnaps Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of an arms manufacturer. The ransom is money and weapons for the cause of black liberation. The FBI and the LAPD turn to Easy Rawlins in hopes that he can cross racial and cultural lines to get the girl back before she is executed by her captors.
A Kirkus Reviews critic noted that Mosley creates “scene after memorable scene” in Rose Gold, but that they all lead to an “untidy resolution.” The critic concluded: “Mosley may not write great endings, but it’s hard to top his middles.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer had a higher assessment, commenting that in this “impressive” thirteenth installment, “Easy’s experiences and insights perfectly mirror the turbulent ’60s.” A Booklist contributor also had praise, noting that this “Easy Rawlins novel harks back to the great early days of the series.”
In his 2015 stand-alone novel, Inside a Silver Box, Mosley combines science fiction and urban fantasy with philosophical speculation and social commentary. The author posits a Silver Box created in ages long past by the evil conquering race, the Laz, who planned to torture other forms of life with the box. In the event, however, the Silver Box turned the tables, imprisoning the Laz inside itself. The Silver Box now lies beneath the turf of New York’s Central Park, and its power is revived by a murder. Ronnie Bottoms, a small-time black criminal, rapes and kills a white Columbia College student, Lorraine Fell. All of this takes place exactly where the Silver Box is buried, and Lorraine is brought back to life by the Box working through Ronnie to put his life force into the young woman he has brutally killed. This creates an odd bond between victim and perpetrator, made even more urgent in that the Silver Box, in helping to resurrect Lorraine, has also awakened the Laz, who now set their sights on conquering Earth. Meanwhile, Ronnie and Lorraine are transported to a different plane in order to gain superpowers and battle the Laz, learning home truths about themselves and their personal weakness and powers in the process.
Writing on the New York Journal of Books website, Autumn Markus had a mixed assessment of this novel, noting: “ Inside a Silver Box is an uneasy and ultimately unsatisfying work of speculative fiction. The narrative is filled with rich language and poses interesting questions at times, but Mosley seems uncomfortable with the sci-fi trappings of his story. He misses finding ‘the place where those dreams come together,’ but there is still beauty to be found within the pages of this book, thought-provoking (and sometimes just provoking) ideas. Mosley will make you think with this one.” Online Strange Horizons contributor Andy Sawyer similarly felt that this novel “shows the traps that cross-genre fiction can fall into.” Sawyer added: “Its use of the ‘fabulist,’ symbolic aspects of science fiction may miss the more detailed (if equally symbolic) realism of other wings of SF: there is little of conventional SF’s world-building here. Yet that, clearly, is not the kind of sf that Mosley is attempting to write: the everyday life he is chronicling is ‘real’ and gritty enough, and the novel is very much one which wants to contrast the two modes, to use sf as a way of moving away from, rather than simply echoing, the structures of the adventure story.” A Kirkus Reviews critic also had a nuanced evaluation, calling the novel “food for thought, if not entirely digestible.” Higher praise came from a Publishers Weekly writer who observed: “Mosley really pulls out all the stops, managing with improbable success to combine a struggle for the fate of all existence with a story about two New Yorkers from very different backgrounds.”
Mosley returns to his detective series featuring Leonid McGill in the 2015 installment And Sometimes I Wonder about You, in which the private investigator’s life is as chaotic as usual. His revolutionary father, nicknamed “Tolstoy” McGill, is still on the loose and Leonid has not seen him in years. His wife has recently attempted suicide and is now institutionalized, recovering from depression. This has also put a strain on Leonid’s relationship with his girlfriend, Aura. Meanwhile, his son Twill, who is part of his detective agency now, has been out of the office a lot lately, helping out on a robbery case with personal overtones for the young man. Then Hiram Stent comes to Leonid wanting him to track down his cousin, Celia, who is inheriting money. After Leonid turns down the case, Hiram turns up dead and Leonid’s office is broken into. Soon Leonid is deeply involved in a case involving old-family money and also coming to his son’s assistance.
Writing in MBR Bookwatch, Gloria Feit had high praise for And Sometimes I Wonder about You, commenting: “The writing throughout is wonderful, but then we expect nothing less from this author, who carries the reader along swiftly on the ride through his newest, 49th novel, and it is a thoroughly enjoyable experience.” Similarly, Library Journal writer Jerry P. Miller noted, “Mosley writes chaotic and convoluted stories but resolves them in creative and imaginative ways.” Booklist reviewer Christine Tran also had a positive assessment of this book and the McGill books in general, writing, “This gritty, present-day series deserves serious attention from all fans of mainstream hard-boiled detective fiction.” Likewise, a Publishers Weekly critic concluded: “Mosley’s sharp ear for dialogue and talent for sketching memorable characters are much in evidence in this installment, further deepening his complex lead.”
Easy Rawlins returns in Mosley’s 2016 novel, Charcoal Joe. It is the late 1960s and Rawlins is now a bit more settled, a partner in a detective agency funded with the money he earned in the Rose Gold case, with adopted children in good shape, and about to pop the question to his good-looking flight attendant girlfriend, Bonnie Shay. Life is good, and then comes the discovery that Bonnie has run off and married an African prince. Heart-broken, Easy soon latches onto a case that will prove a distraction for his sadness. A black graduate of Stanford University doing postgraduate work at UCLA, Seymour Braithwaite, had been arrested for the murder of a white man from Rodondo Beach. A friend of Seymour’s father, Rufus Tyler, better known as Charcoal Joe, a dangerous criminal, comes to Easy for help. He offers to pay well if Easy can prove Seymour innocent, a task that proves daunting as the young man appears to have racial motives for the crime and was found standing over the dead man’s body. Pursuing the investigation, Easy is soon over his head in suspects, including the Cincinnati Mob and other mobsters who have a beef with Charcoal Joe, and also a money-laundering scheme that could prove motive in the murder.
Reviewing Charcoal Joe in Library Journal, Miller commented: “Mosley’s exciting and profound mysteries with their poetic prose and historical clarity fascinate readers because Easy moves so smoothly among different worlds.” Similarly, Booklist reviewer Tran felt that readers of this complex mystery will “happily recognize the case as the mere backdrop for Easy’s emotionally charged story, insightful lens into L.A.’s 1960s streets, and always impressive mental acrobatics.” A Publishers Weekly contributor also had praise, commenting: “This is a must for Easy Rawlins fans and anyone who appreciates fresh, powerful prose.” Likewise, a Kirkus Reviews critic commended Mosley’s “matchless ability to present mosaic worlds in which even the most minor characters arrive burning with their own unquenchable stories.” Washington Post contributor Neely Tucker was also impressed with this series installment, observing: “If you’ve read Mosley, you know that Easy is probably going to figure things out by the end, although at a cost. But like the crosstown drive from West L.A. to Watts, you don’t hop in the car with Easy Rawlins for the destination. You ride shotgun for the trip.”
Mosley introduces a new character in 2018’s Down the River unto the Sea: Joe King Oliver, a detective for the NYPD, at least until he was framed for sexual assault. After spending time in jail, he is now a private investigator working with his teenage daughter. When Oliver receives a letter from his accuser that admits she was paid to lie, Oliver has to track down who took him down and figure out why. Winner of the Edgar Award for the Best Novel of the year, Down the River unto the Sea launches a new detective series.
Bill Ott, writing in Booklist, wrote “it’s the perfect moment for Mosley to unveil an exciting new hero.” Ott remarked that the new character “rekindles some of the remarkable energy that drove the early Rawlins novels” and praised Mosley for writing with “great power.” A writer in Kirkus Reviews noted that it might be a new character but it is still Mosley’s “signature style” that will make readers “ready and eager for whatever he’s serving up.” The review implied that the story might be a bit too reminiscent of earlier novels but praised the writing as “rough-hewn, rhythmic, and lyrical.” In Publishers Weekly, the review pointed out that Mosley dedicates the novel to “Malcolm, Medgar, and Martin,” which “underlines the difference that one man can make in the fight for justice.”
Mosley turns in a slightly different direction with John Woman, published later in 2018. This time the protagonist, the title character, is an unconventional history professor who changed his identity after killing a man when he was sixteen years old. Haunted by the crime, he creates a new academic movement about how history can be unreliable and mysterious, but the place where he teaches has mysteries of its own, and then people pop up who might know about Woman’s true history.
“Offbeat and insightful” is how a critic in Publishers Weekly described John Woman. It called the story “fast paced but still full of provocative questions” and said the novel is “one to savor” and an “unpredictable, unabashedly strange good time.” A reviewer in Kirkus Reviews agreed, calling it a “novel of ideas” but one that has the “unexpected force of a left hook and the metallic gleam of a new firearm.” The review particularly highlighted how Mosley combines both “psychological suspense and philosophic inquiry.”
Mosley returns to the “Leonid McGill” series in Trouble Is What I Do, published in 2019. This time McGill has to confront his own past when he tries to deliver a provocative letter for a ninety-two-year-old Mississippi bluesman. When an assassin tries to put a hit on the musician, McGill has to protect him and others who are in danger from a powerful man determined to keep a secret hidden.
In Booklist, Christine Tran reviewed Trouble Is What I Do, calling it a “wrenching American noir” told with a “powerful streamlined voice.” According to Tran, the result is a novel that “will stick with readers long after the final page.” A review in Publishers Weekly admitted the story is “easy-reading.”
After the publication in 2020 of his short-story collection The Awkward Black Man (which won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work), Mosley returns to the character of Easy Rawlins with the fifteenth installment in the series, Blood Grove. The year is 1969, and Rawlins is hired by a troubled white Vietnam vet to investigate a strange occurrence. Meanwhile, Rawlins has his own trouble when the white uncle of Rawlins’s adopted daughter shows up. The PI has to deal with thieves, goons, crime bosses, and the LAPD officers who resent Rawlins’s yellow Rolls Royce.
The series still has “plenty of game,” a reviewer in Kirkus Review wrote, and called the story “one of the knottiest cases” of Rawlins’s career. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly agreed, writing “this marvelous series is as relevant as ever” and declaring that the novel highlights “a world of Black survivors who know how difficult their struggle remains.”
Mosley returns to the character of detective Joe King Oliver with the second novel in the series, Every Man a King. Alfred Xavier Quiller has been accused of murder, and Oliver is hired to determine if Quiller, who happens to be a white nationalist, has been framed. As Oliver goes deeper into Quiller’s past and present, he has to figure out who is working for whom while trying to protect himself and those he loves.
Daniel Nieh, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called Every Man a King “provocative” and said that it “skitters across the spectrum between orthodox and radical like a polygraph needle wired to a nervy accomplice.” Nieh noted how the story evokes the Louisiana populist Huey Long and features the themes of freedom, class, and race. Mosley’s fans “will not be disappointed,” Nieh stated, as he compared this novel to those of Raymond Chandler and argued that this novel is “a sterling example of a genre that it scarcely transcends.” In Booklist, Bill Ott agreed, writing that this “lives up to the excitement generated by its Edgar-winning predecessor” despite “some overly byzantine turns.” Ott was particularly enthusiastic about the various characters Mosley creates. A reviewer in Kirkus Reviews echoed Ott, calling Every Man a King a “strong second outing” that is “lifted by the intelligence of its characters” in spite of the “knotty” plot.
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Mosley went in a different direction with the dystopian novella Touched. The story’s protagonist, Martin, wakes one day to realize three things: he has a alternative good consciousness named Temple, humanity is on its way to destroying everything in the universe, and he is the only thing that can stop it. Martin begins by defending his family but is then brought before a racist judicial system and tossed into prison. Through that, however, he comes face to face with Death, and he starts encouraging everyone, including his Black family and their racist oppressors, to stand and fight.
Laura Hiatt, in Library Journal, called the book a “hard-hitting topical story” based on a “dizzyingly alternative reality.” Hiatt predicted that Mosley’s fans would enjoy this outing. A reviewer in Kirkus Reviews praised the book for its “fast-moving action and jaw-dropping twists.” They found the racial dynamics “compelling” and compared the story to a Black Mirror episode.
Mosley returned to the world of Easy Rawlins with Farewell, Amethystine, a novel set in 1970 as Rawlins has reached the age of fifty and is content with his lot, including his family. Then the titular character arrives, a young Black woman who wants to hire him to find her ex-husband. Something about Amethystine reminds him of an old flame. Mosley would love to look up policeman Melvin Suggs for help, but Suggs is in hiding, so Rawlins has to venture on his own in the familiar world of gamblers, thugs, and racist cops.
A writer in Publishers Weekly noted that Easy’s own life and emotions are more compelling than the case Rawlins is investigating, and they appreciated how Mosley “sheds keen light on the difficulties of navigating life in America as a Black man.” In World Literature Today, W. M. Hagen wrote, “The plot unfolds smoothly, lightened by nuggets of wisdom—Raymond Chandler style—that help establish Rawlins’s perspective on life in the mean streets of LA.”
Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right was the third installment in the “King Oliver” detective series. This time, Oliver’s case is to find his own father, Odin, from whom he has been estranged since he was a child. Oliver’s grandmother is dying, and her final wish is to see Odin, who disappeared when he was released from prison years before. As Oliver learns more about his father, he comes to realize Odin is much more complicated than Oliver realized. A parallel case involves Oliver trying to track down the missing wife of a billionaire, a woman that Oliver himself finds fascinating.
David Keymer, in Library Journal, loved this outing from Mosley, calling it “a gritty crime novel with a pace that never lets up.” A writer in Kirkus Reviews described the book as a “dense but deeply reflective sequel” with a “kaleidoscopic plot” that is “rooted in street philosophy.”
Easy Rawlins returns in Gray Dawn: An Easy Rawlins Mystery. The story this time involves a missing woman named Lutisha James. Rawlins, however, has crossed paths with her under a different name, and now she seems connected to the murder of three people at the home where she had worked. Just as he is making progress on that case, he stumbles onto another murder investigation. And then Rawlins himself is arrested. Life is never easy for Easy.
“Easy himself is as charming as ever,” wrote a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. They especially enjoyed Mosley’s “stirring prose and vivid evocation of 1970s L.A.” A contributor in Kirkus Reviews highlighted similar strengths in the novel, writing, “By now, it’s tempting to take Mosley’s inimitable blend of taut lyricism and evocative landscapes for granted. Don’t.” In Booklist, Christine Tran wrote, “In Mosley’s masterful hands, this is a portal to Los Angeles streets and their vastly different worlds.”
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BIOCRIT
BOOKS
American Writers, Supplement XIII, Charles Scribner’s Sons (New York, NY), 2003.
Brady, Owen E., and Derek C. Maus, editors, Finding a Way Home: A Critical Assessment of Walter Mosley’s Fiction, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2008.
Brady, Owen E., editor, Conversations with Walter Mosley, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2011.
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 97, 1997, Volume 184, 2004, Volume 278, 2009.
Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000.
Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 306: American Mystery and Detective Writers, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2004.
Mystery and Suspense Writers, Charles Scribner’s Sons (New York, NY), 1998.
Newsmakers, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2003.
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000.
St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.
PERIODICALS
African American Review, summer 1997, Roger A. Berger, “‘The Black Dick’: Race, Sexuality, and Discourse in the L.A. Novels of Walter Mosley,” pp. 281-295.
African Business, November 2005, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 65.
Armchair Detective, spring 1991, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 228; winter 1992, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 123.
Atlantic, October 2006, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 127.
Black Issues Book Review, July 2000, Amy Alexander, review of Workin’ on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History, p. 52; November-December 2001, Tony Lindsay, review of Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World, p. 57; January-February 2003, Binti L. Villinger, review of Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories, p. 31; May-June 2003, Judy Simmons, review of What Next: A Memoir toward World Peace, p. 64; May-June 2005, Angela P. Dodson, “Walter Mosley,” award announcement, p. 8.
Black Issues in Higher Education, April 29, 1999, Patricia Reid-Merritt, review of Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems, p. 34.
Blade (Toronto, OH), September 24, 2006, Tahree Lane, “A Man of Opinion: Walter Mosley’s Strength Shines through in Well-Crafted Writing.”
Book, May-June 2001, “Walter Mosley Meets Colson Whitehead”; January-February 2002, Don McLeese, review of Futureland, p. 73.
Booklist, August 1997, Bill Ott, review of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, p. 1848; September 1, 1998, Ray Olson, review of Blue Light, p. 6; January 1, 2000, Mary Carroll, review of Workin’ on the Chain Gang, p. 840; September 1, 2001, Ray Olson, review of Futureland, p. 4; December 1, 2002, Keir Graff, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 629; February 15, 2003, Vernon Ford, review of What Next, p. 1039; October 15, 2003, Keir Graff, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 358, and Donna Seaman, review of The Best American Short Stories 2003, p. 387; June 1, 2005, Bill Ott, review of Cinnamon Kiss, p. 1712; October 15, 2005, Ray Olson, review of The Wave, p. 5; December 15, 2005, Hazel Rochman, review of Life Out of Context: Which Includes a Proposal for the Non-Violent Takeover of the House of Representatives, p. 8; August 1, 2006, Bill Ott, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 7; November 15, 2006, Keir Graff, review of Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel, p. 7; February 15, 2007, David Pitt, review of This Year You Write Your Novel, p. 24; February 15, 2010, Keir Graff, review of Known to Evil, p. 4; September 15, 2010, Thomas Gaughan, review of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, p. 27; January 1, 2011, David Pitt, review of When the Thrill Is Gone, p. 53; December 15, 2011, Wes Lukowsky, review of All I Did Was Shoot My Man, p. 25; May 15, 2012, David Pitt, review of The Gift of Fire/On the Head of a Pin, p. 28; September 15, 2012, David Pitt, review of Merge/Disciple, p. 33; March 1, 2013, Bill Ott, review of Little Green, p. 24; March 15, 2013, David Pitt, review of Stepping Stone/Love Machine, p. 58; February 1, 2014, David Pitt, review of Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore, p. 23; August, 2014, review of Rose Gold; May 1, 2015, Christine Tran, review of And Sometimes I Wonder about You, p. 18; May 1, 2016, Christine Tran, review of Charcoal Joe, p. 20; November 15, 2017, Bill Ott, review of Down the River unto the Sea, p. 26; November 1, 2019, Christine Tran, review of Trouble Is What I Do, p. 28; January 1, 2023, Bill Ott, review of Every Man a King, p. 30; August, 2025, Christine Tran, review of Gray Dawn: An Easy Rawlins Mystery, p. 41; September, 2025, Donna Seaman, author interview, pp. 14+.
Chicago Tribune, July 1, 1990, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 6.
Detroit Free Press, January 3, 2003, Lev Raphael, review of Six Easy Pieces.
Ebony, April, 2003, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 23; September 2006, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 28.
Entertainment Weekly, August 18, 1995, Tom De Haven, review of R. L.’s Dream, pp. 47-48; July 19, 2002, Troy Patterson, review of Bad Boy Brawly Brown, p. 66; January 17, 2003, Bruce Fretts, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 84; January 9, 2004, Tom Sinclair, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 87; July 9, 2004, Tom Sinclair, review of Little Scarlet, p. 94; October 6, 2006, Gilbert Cruz, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 11; December 22, 2006, Jennifer Reese, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 86; November 26, 2010, Darren French, review of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, p. 76.
Esquire, June, 1994, review of Black Betty, p. 42.
Essence, April, 2000, Elsie B. Washington, review of Workin’ on the Chain Gang, p. 88.
Forbes, August 11, 1997, Steve Forbes, review of Gone Fishin’, p. 28.
Guardian Review (London, England), September 6, 2003, Maya Jaggi, “Socrates of the Streets,” p. 20.
Hollywood Reporter, March 30, 2007, “Mosley Side,” p. 6.
Independent (London, England), April 9, 2007, John Williams, review of Killing Johnny Fry.
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2001, review of Futureland, p. 1253; November 15, 2002, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 1660; September 1, 2003, review of The Best American Short Stories 2003, p. 1095; November 1, 2003, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 1291; July 1, 2006, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 657; October 15, 2006, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 1039; August 15, 2007, review of Blonde Faith; April 15, 2008, review of The Tempest Tales; September 1, 2008, review of The Right Mistake: The Further Philosophical Investigations of Socrates Fortlow; January 15, 2009, review of The Long Fall; January 15, 2010, review of Known to Evil; March 1, 2011, review of Twelve Steps toward Political Revelation; December 1, 2011, review of All I Did Was Shoot My Man; June 1, 2012, review of The Gift of Fire/On the Head of a Pin; September 15, 2012, review of Merge/Disciple; March 1, 2013, review of Stepping Stone/Love Machine; April 15, 2013, review of Little Green; February 15, 2014, review of Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore; August 1, 2014, review of Rose Gold; November 15, 2014, review of Inside a Silver Box; April 1, 2016, review of Charcoal Joe; November 15, 2017, review of Down the River unto the Sea; July 1, 2018, review of John Woman; September 15, 2020, review of The Awkward Black Man; December 1, 2020, review of Blood Grove; February 15, 2023, review of Every Man a King; August 1, 2023, review of Touched; April 15, 2024, review of Farewell, Amethystine;January 1, 2025, review of Been Wrong So Long It Feels Right; August 1, 2025, review of Gray Dawn.
Kliatt, May 2005, Paula Rohrlick, review of 47, p. 16.
Library Journal, October 1, 1997, Lawrence Rungren, review of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, p. 124; October 1, 1998, Michael Rogers, review of Blue Light, p. 134; August, 1999, Michael Rogers, review of Walkin’ the Dog, p. 141; February 1, 2000, Anthony O. Edmonds, review of Workin’ on the Chain Gang, p. 105; June 1, 2001, Roger A. Berger, review of Fearless Jones, p. 224; October 1, 2001, Rachel Singer Gordon, review of Futureland, p. 145; January 2003, Michael Rogers, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 164; December 2003, Michael Rogers, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 168; June 1, 2004, Michael Rogers, “Walter Mosley,” p. 107; August 1, 2005, Roger A. Berger, review of Cinnamon Kiss, p. 60; January 1, 2006, Sara Tompson, review of The Wave, p. 105; November 1, 2006, Karen Kleckner, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 69; October 15, 2008, Joy St. John, review of The Right Mistake, p. 58; February 15, 2009, David Keymer, review of The Long Fall, p. 100; October 1, 2010, Jerry P. Miller, review of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, p. 70; February 1, 2011, Jo Ann Vicarel, review of When the Thrill Is Gone, p. 47; May 1, 2011, review of Twelve Steps toward Political Revelation, p. 93; November 15, 2011, Jerry P. Miller, review of All I Did Was Shoot My Man, p. 69; May 15, 2012, David Keymer, review of The Gift of Fire/On the Head of a Pin, p. 75; March 1, 2013, David Keymer, review of Stepping Stone/Love Machine, p. 73; March 1, 2013, review of Little Green, p. 7; March 15, 2014, Ashanti White, review of Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore, p. 114; May 15, 2016, Jerry P. Miller, review of Charcoal Joe, p. 76; May 15, 2015, Jerry P. Miller, review of And Sometimes I Wonder about You, p. 79; May 15, 2016, Jerry P. Miller, review of Charcoal Joe, p. 76; August, 2023, Laura Hiatt, review of Touched, pp. 68+; October, 2024, David Keymer, review of Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right, p. 94.
Los Angeles, August, 2002, Greil Marcus, “In the Secret Country,” pp. 98-103; November, 2010, “Shot On,” p. 46.
Los Angeles Times, December 28, 2008, Thomas Curwen, “Socrates Gets on His Soapbox.”
Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 29, 1990, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 3; July 12, 1992, review of White Butterfly, p. 2; June 5, 1994, review of Black Betty, p. 3; August 6, 1995, review of R.L.’s Dream, pp. 3, 8.
Maclean’s, December 13, 2010, Dafna Izenberg, review of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, p. 47.
MBR Bookwatch, April 2016, Gloria Feit, review of And Sometimes I Wonder about You.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 27, 2001, Jim Higgins, review of Futureland.
Moment, September-October, 2010, Johanna Neuman, “The Curious Case of Walter Mosley.”
Newsweek, July 9, 1990, Malcolm Jones, Jr., review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 65; April 2, 2007, “A Life in Books: Walter Mosley,” p. 15.
New York, January 15, 2007, Vikram Chandra, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 60.
New Yorker, September 17, 1990, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 110; January 19, 2004, Ben Greenman, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 88; December 20, 2010, review of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, p. 123.
New York Times, September 4, 1990, D.J.R. Bruckner, “Detective Stories Are Novelist’s Route to Moral Questions,” p. B1; March 20, 2000, Felicia R. Lee, “Walter Mosley: Bracing Views from a Man of Mysteries”; April 10, 2006, Janet Maslin, “A Golden Boy and a Tin Can for Kicking.”
New York Times Book Review, September 6, 1992, Parnell Hall, review of White Butterfly, p. 25; June 16, 1996, R.W.B. Lewis, review of A Little Yellow Dog; November 9, 1997, Sven Birkerts, review of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned; November 7, 1999, Adam Goodheart, review of Walkin’ the Dog; June 10, 2001, Jesse Berrett, “Same Time, Same Place”; November 25, 2001, Nikki Dillon, review of Futureland, p. 18; February 8, 2004, Deborah Solomon, “It’s the Money, Stupid”; July 25, 2004, Marilyn Stasio, review of Little Scarlet, p. 19; April 3, 2005, Ihsan Taylor, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 28; September 24, 2006, Marilyn Stasio, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 19; January 21, 2007, Charles Taylor, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 19; March 28, 2010, Marilyn Stasio, “Prejudice’s Poison,” p. 26; November 21, 2010, Marilyn Stasio, “An Eye for an Eye,” p. 26; March 13, 2011, Marilyn Stasio, “A Trophy Wife’s Tale,” p. 18; May 26, 2013, Marilyn Stasio, review of Little Green, p. 15; June 2, 2013, “By the Book: Walter Mosley,” p. 10; March 5, 2023, Daniel Nieh, “The Rogue and the Noir,” review of Every Man a King, p. 13.
Observer (London, England), October 23, 1994, Nicci Gerrard, review of White Butterfly, p. 20.
O, the Oprah Magazine, October 2006, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 242.
People, July 15, 1996, Pam Lambert, review of A Little Yellow Dog, pp. 37-38; March 3, 1997, J.D. Reed, review of Gone Fishin’, p. 43; November 1, 1999, William Plummer, review of Walkin’ the Dog, p. 551; February 9, 2004, V.R. Peterson, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 41; July 26, 2004, Champ Clark, review of Little Scarlet, p. 47.
Publishers Weekly, June 1, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 46; May 17, 1991, review of A Red Death, p. 57; September 5, 1994, review of Black Betty, p. 32; May 29, 1995, review of R.L.’s Dream, p. 65; May 13, 1996, review of A Little Yellow Dog, p. 58; October 6, 1997, review of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, p. 74; January 11, 1999, review of Black Genius, p. 61; November 15, 1999, review of Workin’ on the Chain Gang, p. 46; May 28, 2001, review of Fearless Jones, p. 53; September 10, 2001, review of Futureland, p. 65, and Robert C. Hahn, “PW Talks with Walter Mosley,” p. 54; June 17, 2002, review of Bad Boy Brawly Brown, p. 45; December 16, 2002, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 49; June 16, 2003, review of Fear Itself, p. 54; May 24, 2004, review of Little Scarlet, pp. 47-48; May 16, 2005, review of 47, p. 64; November 14, 2005, review of Life Out of Context, p. 57; February 13, 2006, review of Fortunate Son, p. 62; July 31, 2006, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 47; October 30, 2006, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 37; October 15, 2007, review of Diablerie, p. 44; August 11, 2008, review of The Right Mistake, p. 27; February 9, 2009, “A Profile of Walter Mosley,” p. 10; January 25, 2010, review of Known to Evil, p. 100; September 13, 2010, review of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, p. 22; January 3, 2011, review of When the Thrill Is Gone, p. 30; March 14, 2011, review of Twelve Steps toward Political Revelation, p. 64; October 31, 2011, review of All I Did Was Shoot My Man, p. 37; March 12, 2012, review of The Gift of Fire/On the Head of a Pin, p. 43; August 13, 2012, review of Merge/Disciple, p. 45; February 11, 2013, review of Stepping Stone/Love Machine, p. 45; February 25, 2013, review of Little Green, p. 146; March 17, 2014, review of Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore, p. 59; July 7, 2014, review of Rose Gold, p. 47; November 24, 2014, review of Inside a Silver Box, p. 56; March 23, 2015, review of And Sometimes I Wonder about You, p. 1; April 4, 2016, review of Charcoal Joe, p. 60; November 13, 2017, review of Down the River unto the Sea, p. 42; July 2, 2018, review of John Woman, pp. 46+; June 17, 2019, review of Elements of Fiction, pp. 56+; December 9, 2019, review of Trouble Is What I Do, p. 127; November 9, 2020, review of Blood Grove, p. 51; April 15, 2024, review of Farewell, Amethystine, pp. 34+; November 4, 2024, review of Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right, p. 30; July 14, 2025, review of Gray Dawn, p. 90.
San Francisco Review of Books, February 1991, review of A Red Death, p. 38.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL), September 20, 2006, Oline H. Cogdill, review of Fear of the Dark; January 31, 2003, Oline H. Cogdill, review of Six Easy Pieces; February 4, 2004, Oline H. Cogdill, review of The Man in My Basement; February 4, 2004, Oline Cogdill, “Life Isn’t Easy for Leonid McGill.”
Time, August 11, 2003, Lev Grossman, “If You Read Only One Mystery Novel This Summer …,” p. 58; March 25, 2010, Gilbert Cruz, “Mystery Writer Walter Mosley.”
Vanity Fair, February, 1993, Christopher Hitchens, “The Tribes of Walter Mosley,” p. 46.
Wall Street Journal, July 24, 1991, Tom Nolan, review of A Red Death, p. A8.
Washington Post, June 9, 2016, Neely Tucker, review of Charcoal Joe.
Washington Post Book World, August 16, 1992, review of White Butterfly, p. 6; August 20, 1995, review of R.L.’s Dream, p. 7.
World Literature Today, July-August, 2024, W. M. Hagen, review of Farewell, Amethystine, p. 71.
Writer, December 1999, Lewis Burke Frumkes, “A Conversation with Walter Mosley,” p. 20.
ONLINE
All Things Considered website, http://www.npr.org/ (November 10, 2010), Alan Cheuse, review of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey.
Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (August 4, 2008), Tom Callahan, review of Diablerie; (April 15, 2011), Max Falkowitz, review of The Right Mistake.
Boston Globe, http://articles.boston.com/ (January 19, 2012), James H. Burnett III, review of All I Did Was Shoot My Man; James H. Burnett III, review of Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore.
Comicsxf, https://www.comicsxf.com (October 18, 2021), Zach Rabiroff, author interview.
Curled Up with a Good Book, http://www.curledup.com/ (April 15, 2011), Sam Sattler, review of The Right Mistake.
Electric Lit, https://electricliterature.com (September 15, 2022), Gabriel Bump, author interview.
Fresh Air Online, http://www.npr.org/ (December 6, 2010), Terry Gross, “Mosley’s Last Days Restores Memory, but at a Cost.”
Houston Chronicle, http://blog.chron.com/ (May 18, 2013), P.G. Koch, review of Little Green.
Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ (July 4, 2014), “Walter Mosley.”
Juggle, http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/ (January 19, 2011), Rachel Emma Silverman, “Q&A: Walter Mosley on Taking Care of Your Parents.”
NPR Online, http://www.npr.org/ (May 15, 2013), Tanya Ballard Brown, “Easy Rawlins Is Alive, or Is He?”; (July 28, 2016), Renee Montagne, “Walter Mosley on the Stories of LA Told Through Easy Rawlins.”
NPR’s Tell Me More Online, http://www.npr.org/ (April 7, 2010), Michel Martin, ‘Author Walter Mosley Helps Youngsters Understand History”; (March 26, 2014), “Walter Mosley: To End Race, We Have to Recognize ‘White’ Doesn’t Exist.”
Talk of the Nation website, http://www.npr.org/ (July 5, 2010), Neal Conan, “Ten Thousand Years of History Run through Mosley’s Veins”; (January 26, 2012), Jennifer Ludden, “In ‘Shoot My Man,’ Mosley Tells Tale of Atonement.”
Vulture, http://www.vulture.com/ (October 13, 2016), Abraham Riesman, “Novelist Walter Mosley Talks Luke Cage, Colorism, and Why Spider-Man Was the ‘First Black Superhero.’”
Walter Mosley website, http://www.waltermosley.com (December 9, 2025).
Walter Mosley is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America. He is the author of more than sixty critically acclaimed books that cover a wide range of ideas, genres, and forms including fiction (literary, mystery, and science fiction), political monographs, writing guides including Elements of Fiction, a memoir in paintings, and a young adult novel called 47. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages,
From a forthcoming collection of short stories, The Awkward Black Man, to his daring novel John Woman, which explored deconstructionist history, and his standalone crime novel Down the River and Unto the Sea, which won an Edgar Award for Best Novel, the rich storylines that Mosley has created deepen the understanding and appreciation of Black life in the United States. He has introduced an indelible cast of characters into the American canon starting with his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, which brought Easy Rawlins, his private detective in postwar Los Angeles and his friends Jackson Blue and Raymond “Mouse” Alexander into reader’s lives. Mosley has explored both large issues and intimate realities through the lens of characters like the Black philosopher Socrates Fortlow; the elder suffering from Alzheimer’s, Ptolemy Grey; the bluesman R L; the boxer and New York private investigator Leonid McGill; Debbie Dare, the porn star of Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore; and Tempest Landry and his struggling angel, among many others.
Mosley has also written and staged several plays including The Fall of Heaven, based on his Tempest Landry stories and directed by the acclaimed director Marion McClinton. Several of his books have been adapted for film and television including Devil in a Blue Dress (starring Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle and Jennifer Beals) and the HBO production of Always Outnumbered (starring Laurence Fishburne and Natalie Cole). His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction—long-form essays and op-eds—have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Nation among other publications. He is also a writer and an executive producer on the John Singleton FX drama series, “Snowfall.”
Concerned by the lack of diversity in all levels of publishing, Mosley established The Publishing Certificate Program with the City University of New York to bring together book professionals and students hailing from a wide range of racial, ethnic and economic communities for courses, internships, and job opportunities. In 2013, Mosley was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and he is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, The Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, a Grammy®, several NAACP Image awards, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, he was named the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mosley now lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.
Walter Mosley
USA flag (b.1952)
Walter Mosley is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America today. He is the author of more than 34 critically acclaimed books, including the major bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into 21 languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The Nation, among other publications. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.
Awards: CWA (2023), NBA (2020), LA Times (2019), Nero (2019) see all
Genres: Mystery, Science Fiction, Literary Fiction
New and upcoming books
September 2025
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Gray Dawn
(Easy Rawlins, book 17)May 2026
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Ghalen
Series
Easy Rawlins
1. Devil in a Blue Dress (1990)
2. A Red Death (1991)
3. White Butterfly (1992)
4. Black Betty (1994)
5. A Little Yellow Dog (1996)
6. Gone Fishin' (1997)
7. Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002)
8. Six Easy Pieces (2003)
9. Little Scarlet (2004)
10. Cinnamon Kiss (2005)
11. Blonde Faith (2007)
12. Little Green (2013)
13. Rose Gold (2014)
14. Charcoal Joe (2016)
15. Blood Grove (2021)
16. Farewell, Amethystine (2024)
17. Gray Dawn (2025)
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Socrates Fortlow
1. Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997)
2. Walkin' the Dog (1999)
The Right Mistake (2008)
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Fearless Jones
1. Fearless Jones (2001)
2. Fear Itself (2003)
3. Fear of the Dark (2006)
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Leonid McGill
0.5. Karma (2011)
1. The Long Fall (2008)
2. Known to Evil (2010)
3. When the Thrill is Gone (2011)
4. All I Did Was Shoot My Man (2012)
5. And Sometimes I Wonder About You (2015)
6. Trouble Is What I Do (2020)
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Crosstown to Oblivion
1. On the Head of a Pin (2012)
The Gift of Fire (2012)
Merge / Disciple (2012)
2. Disciple (2012)
Love Machine (2013)
3. Stepping Stone (2013)
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King Oliver
1. Down the River unto the Sea (2018)
2. Every Man a King (2023)
3. Been Wrong So Long it Feels Like Right (2025)
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Novels
RL's Dream (1995)
Blue Light (1998)
The Greatest (2000)
The Man in My Basement (2004)
47 (2005)
The Wave (2006)
Fortunate Son (2006)
Killing Johnny Fry (2006)
Diablerie (2007)
The Tempest Tales (2008)
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2010)
Odyssey (2013)
The Further Tales of Tempest Landry (2015)
Inside a Silver Box (2015)
John Woman (2018)
Touched (2023)
Ghalen (2026)
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Collections
Futureland (2001)
The Awkward Black Man (2020)
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Novellas and Short Stories
Whispers in the Dark (2000)
Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore (2014)
Jack Strong (2014)
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Series contributed to
Best American Short Stories
The Best American Short Stories 2003 (2003) (with Katrina Kenison)
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Transgressions
Chasing Shadows (2006) (with Joyce Carol Oates)
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Plays hide
The Fall of Heaven (2011)
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Non fiction hide
Black Genius (1999)
Working on the Chain Gang (2000)
What Next (2003)
Life Out of Context (2005)
This Year You Write Your Novel (2007)
Conversations with Walter Mosley (2011)
Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation (2011)
Folding the Red Into the Black (2016)
The Elements of Fiction Writing (2019)
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Omnibus editions hide
The Walter Mosley Omnibus (1995)
Walter Mosley
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Brooklyn politician, see Walter T. Mosley. For the American lawyer, see Walter Mosley (lawyer). For the US Navy officer, see Walter Harold Mosley.
Walter Mosley
Head and shoulders of Walter Mosley with drooping eyelids wearing black fedora, red shirt without a collar, black jacket, and clean shaven.
Mosley at the 2014 Texas Book Festival
Born Walter Ellis Mosley
January 12, 1952 (age 73)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Alma mater Johnson State College (BA)
Occupation Novelist
Notable work Devil in a Blue Dress (1990)
Spouse Joy Kellman (m. 1987; div. 2001)
Awards National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
Diamond Dagger, 2023
Website waltermosley.com
Walter Ellis Mosley (born January 12, 1952) is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hardboiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. In 2020, Mosley received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, making him the first Black man to receive the honor.[1]
Personal life
Mosley was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Ella (née Slatkin), was Jewish and worked as a personnel clerk. Her ancestors had immigrated from Russia.[2] His father, Leroy Mosley (1924–1993), was an African American from Louisiana who was a supervising custodian at a Los Angeles public school. He had worked as a clerk in the segregated US army during the Second World War. His parents tried to marry in 1951, and while the union was legal in California, where they were living, no one would give them a marriage license.[3][4][5]
Mosley was an only child, and he ascribes his writing imagination to "an emptiness in my childhood that I filled up with fantasies.” For $9.50 a week, he attended the Victory Baptist day school, a private African-American elementary school that held pioneering classes in black history. When he was 12, his parents moved from South Central to the more comfortable, working-class west LA.[6] He graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School, in 1970.[7] Mosley describes his father as a deep thinker and storyteller, a "black Socrates.” His mother encouraged him to read European classics, from Dickens and Zola to Camus. He also loves Langston Hughes and Gabriel García Márquez. He was largely raised in a non-political family culture, although there were racial conflicts flaring throughout L.A. at the time. He later became more highly politicized and outspoken about racial inequalities in the US, which are a context for much of his fiction.
Mosley went through a "long-haired hippie" phase, drifting around Santa Cruz and Europe. He dropped out of Goddard College, a liberal arts college in Plainfield, Vermont, and then earned a political science degree at Johnson State College. Abandoning a doctorate in political theory, he started work programming computers. He moved to New York in 1981, and met the dancer and choreographer Joy Kellman, whom he married in 1987. Kellman, like Mosley's mother, was Jewish.[8] They separated ten years later, and were divorced in 2001. While working for Mobil Oil, Mosley took a writing course at City College in Harlem, after being inspired by Alice Walker's book The Color Purple.[9] One of his tutors there, Irish writer Edna O'Brien, became a mentor and encouraged him, saying, "You're Black, Jewish, with a poor upbringing; there are riches therein."[10][11]
Mosley still resides in New York City.[6]
He says that he identifies as both African-American and Jewish, with strong feelings for both groups.[9]
Career
Mosley started writing at 34 and claims to have written every day, since, penning more than forty books and often publishing two books a year. He has written in a variety of fiction categories, including mystery and afrofuturist science fiction, as well as nonfiction politics. His work has been translated into 21 languages. His direct inspirations include the detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett, Graham Greene and Raymond Chandler. Mosley's fame increased in 1992 when presidential candidate Bill Clinton, a fan of murder mysteries, named Mosley as one of his favorite authors.[6] Mosley made publishing history, in 1997, by forgoing an advance to give the manuscript of Gone Fishin' to a small, independent publisher, Black Classic Press in Baltimore, run by former Black Panther Paul Coates.
Mosley's first published book, Devil in a Blue Dress, was the basis of a 1995 movie starring Denzel Washington, and the following year, a 10-part abridgement of the novel by Margaret Busby, read by Paul Winfield, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4.[12] The world premiere of Mosley's first play, The Fall of Heaven,[13] was staged at the Playhouse in the Park, Cincinnati, Ohio, in January 2010.
Mosley has served on the board of directors of the National Book Awards. He is on the board of the TransAfrica Forum.[14]
Former literature professor Harold Heft argued for Mosley's inclusion in the literary canon of Jewish-American writers. In Moment magazine, Johanna Neuman writes that black literary circles questioned whether Mosley should be considered a "black author". Mosley has said that he prefers to be called a novelist. He explains his desire to write about "black male heroes", saying "hardly anybody in America has written about black male heroes. There are black male protagonists and black male supporting characters, but nobody else writes about black male heroes."[9]
In 2019, after working in the writers room for the television series Snowfall, Mosley was hired, by Alex Kurtzman, for a similar role on the third season of Star Trek: Discovery. After working on the series for three weeks, Mosley was notified by CBS of a complaint made against him by another member of the writers room for Mosley's use of the word "nigger", while telling a story about his experience with a police officer who had used the slur. CBS told Mosley this was usually a fireable offence but said no further action would be taken and asked that he not use the word, again, outside of a script. Mosley chose to leave the series, quitting without informing Kurtzman, and he explained his decision in an op-ed for The New York Times, in September 2019. He did not identify Discovery as the series he was working on in the op-ed, but this was confirmed, in reports on the op-ed, shortly after its release.[15]
Awards and honors
Mosley at the 2024 National Book Awards, introducing Paul Coates
1996 – Black Caucus of the American Library Association's Literary Award for RL's Dream
1996 – O. Henry Award for a Socrates Fortlow story
1998 – Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, for works that increase the appreciation and understanding of race in America
2001 – Grammy Award for Best Album Notes for Richard Pryor's …And It's Deep Too!
2004 – Honorary doctorate from the City College of New York[16]
2005 – Risktaker Award from the Sundance Institute for both his creative and activist efforts
2006 – First recipient of the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award for his young adult novel 47
2007 – NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction, for Blonde Faith
2009 – NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction, for The Long Fall
2013 – Inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame
2014 – NAACP Image Award-nominated for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction, for Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery
2014 – Langston Hughes Medal from the City College of New York[16]
2016 – Named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America (see Edgar Award)
2019 – Edgar Award for Best Novel for Down the River Unto the Sea
2020 – National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters[1]
2021 – NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction, The Awkward Black Man[17]
2023 – Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger – for lifetime achievement[18]
Works
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (July 2022)
External videos
video icon Presentation by Mosley on Gone Fishin', January 15, 1997, C-SPAN
video icon Booknotes interview with Mosley on Workin' on the Chain Gang, April 23, 2000, C-SPAN
video icon Discussion with Mosley and Harry Belafonte on Life Out of Context, February 17, 2006, C-SPAN
video icon Interview with Mosley on Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation, May 1, 2011, C-SPAN
Non-series novels
RL's Dream (1995)
Blue Light (1998)
Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World (2001)
The Man in My Basement (2004)
Walking the Line (2005), a novella in the Transgressions series
47 (2005)
The Wave (2006)
Fortunate Son (2006)
Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel (2006)
Diablerie (2007)
The Tempest Tales (2008)
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2010)
Parishioner (2012)
Odyssey (2013)
Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore (2014)
The Further Tales of Tempest Landry (2015)
Inside a Silver Box (2015)
John Woman (2018)
The Awkward Black Man (2020), short stories
Touched (2023)
Easy Rawlins mysteries
Devil in a Blue Dress (1990)
A Red Death (1991)
White Butterfly (1992)
Black Betty (1994)
A Little Yellow Dog (1996)
Gone Fishin' (1997)
Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002)
Six Easy Pieces (2003)
Little Scarlet (2004)
Cinnamon Kiss (2005)
Blonde Faith (2007)
Little Green (2013)
Rose Gold (2014)
Charcoal Joe (2016)
Blood Grove (2021)
Farewell, Amethystine (2024)
Gray Dawn (2025)
Fearless Jones mysteries
Fearless Jones (2001)
Fear Itself (2003)
Fear of the Dark (2006)
Leonid McGill mysteries
The Long Fall (2009)
Known to Evil (2010)
When the Thrill Is Gone (2011)
All I Did Was Shoot My Man (2012)
And Sometimes I Wonder About You (2015)
Trouble Is What I Do (2020)
Socrates Fortlow books
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997)
Walkin' the Dog (1999)
The Right Mistake (2008)
Crosstown to Oblivion
The Gift of Fire / On the Head of a Pin (2012)
Merge / Disciple (2012)
Stepping Stone / The Love Machine (2013)
King Oliver books
Down the River unto the Sea (2018)
Every Man a King (2023)
Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right (2025)
Graphic novels
Maximum Fantastic Four (2005, with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby)
The Thing: The Next Big Thing (2022, with Tom Reilly)
Plays
The Fall of Heaven (2011)
Lift (2014)
Nonfiction
Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History (2000)
What Next: An African American Initiative Toward World Peace (2003)
Life Out of Context: Which Includes a Proposal for the Non-violent Takeover of the House of Representatives (2006)
This Year You Write Your Novel (2007)
Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation (2011) ISBN 978-1-56858-642-7
Elements of Fiction (2019)
Films and television
Fallen Angels: Fearless (1995) (TV)
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) (film), associate producer
Always Outnumbered (1998) (TV)
"Little Brother", episode of Masters of Science Fiction (2007) (TV)
Snowfall (TV), consulting producer (2018-2019), executive producer (2021-2023), episode writer: "Prometheus Rising" (2018), "Cash and Carry" (2019), "Blackout" (2019), "Betrayal" (2021), "All the Way Down" (2021), "Celebration" (2022), "Charnel House" (2023), and "Door of No Return" (2023)
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2022) (TV), creator, executive producer, based on his novel of the same name, episode writer: "Reggie", "Robyn", "Sensia", "Coydog", "Nina", and "Ptolemy"
Justified: City Primeval (2023) (TV), consulting producer
The Man in My Basement (2025) (film), co-writer, based on his novel of the same name
The Lowdown (2025) (TV), episode writer: "Tulsa Turnaround"
Mosley, Walter. Touched. Atlantic Monthly. Oct. 2023.176p. ISBN 9780802161840. $26. SF
In Mosley's (Every Man a King) dystopian sci-fi novella, Martin Just wakes up and realizes that he has an alternate good consciousness, Temple, that has awoken after a centuries-long sleep and is the Cure for Humanity. Martin's search for understanding of his predicament starts a snowball effect that will see him hauled before the racist criminal-justice system and thrown into a prison cell, all suffered in order to come face to face with Death: Tor Waxman. Death seeks to destroy Humanity, and Martin must convince his family and a group of racist thugs to stand and fight. In this ongoing battle between good and evil, what sacrifices will need to be made to obtain victory? This dizzyingly alternative reality, combining quotidian evil banalities with intergalactic ones, is sometimes difficult going--not only because readers, like Martin, must figure out what is going on, but also for the systemic racism that serves as a catalyst and a backdrop for the ongoing feud. VERDICT A hard-hitting, topical story that fans of Mosley will enjoy. -- Laura Hiatt
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Hiatt, Laura. "Touched." Library Journal, vol. 148, no. 8, Aug. 2023, pp. 68+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A759873650/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0693b01d. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Mosley, Walter TOUCHED Atlantic Monthly (Fiction None) $26.00 10, 10 ISBN: 9780802161840
An unsuspecting host finds himself at the center of a supernatural plot to eradicate life from the planet.
Rattled awake from a disorienting slumber--and apparently unaware of his own nudity and physical arousal--mild-mannered Black family man Marty Just wanders onto his balcony, the elaborate details of an intergalactic plan to end life on Earth seared into his mind. "Mama, look!" a neighbor child cries, and from that moment, Marty's week only gets weirder: He's arrested for public indecency; kills his vile, racist cellmate in a fugue state of self-defense; posts bail and returns home, only to encounter Aryan gang members ready to avenge their murdered leader. Until this point, the question of whether Marty has suffered a psychotic break or schizophrenic episode is unresolved, but then something inside Marty--an entity called Temple--takes over, attacking the racist thugs with his teeth, biting and tearing the life out of them in a marvelously frenzied action sequence. As it turns out, not only can Temple summon inhuman strength, he can resurrect the dead (!), and he recruits the formerly lifeless racists to help him prevent the encroaching genocide, personified by Tor Waxman, the Angel of Death. Equal parts body horror and necromancy, the book has cinematic fast cuts and an explosive pace that make it read like a Black Mirror episode set against the Hollywood Hills. While a subplot about Marty's pending legal woes adds little to the excitement (it wouldn't be Mosley without sharp-tongued lawyers and pushy cops), the novel is complicated in compelling ways by the racial dynamics and overt gestures toward a pandemic, as Tor Waxman spreads feverish death via unseen contagion to nearly 5,000 souls.
Fast-moving action and jaw-dropping twists move this slim volume along at a dizzying rate.
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"Mosley, Walter: TOUCHED." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2023. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A758849085/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3af54dca. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Mosley, Walter FAREWELL, AMETHYSTINE Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (Fiction None) $29.00 6, 4 ISBN: 9780316491112
The latest Easy Rawlins book finds him, at age 50, more at peace with himself and the world than before. Somehow you know that won't last.
"There I was, a Black man in 1970, driving through the countryside with a corpse in the trunk. I had a trick or two up my sleeve and a loaded .38 in my pocket." If you had to guess who this speaker might be, it wouldn't take long before you came around to Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, the endearing private detective who's the central figure in an absorbing chronicle of urban Los Angeles that's, so far, spanned four decades. This installment finds business humming so well at Easy's detective agency that he and his staff can kick back Monday mornings to chat about flu epidemics, Russian spy satellites, and UCLA's attempt to oust Professor Angela Davis from her job. One bull session is interrupted by the entrance of a sultry young Black woman named Amethystine "Amy" Stoller. She wants Easy to find her ex-husband, a white accountant named Curt Fields, who's dropped abruptly from sight. Rawlins is getting peculiar vibes from this case, most of them resonating from his younger days back in Houston's Fifth Ward, where he'd fallen hard for an older woman named Anger Lee. Memories of that bitter affair stalk Easy as he sets out to find Fields--whose body he eventually discovers on an office floor on top of a sealed envelope with the name "Amethystine" scrawled in pencil. Easy could use some help from Melvin Suggs, his one true LAPD friend. Problem is, Suggs is in hiding, on the run trying to protect his wife from being implicated in a capital crime. It spoils little to disclose that the cases are related--and tangled in a welter of desperate gamblers and sleazy blackmailers through which Easy must uneasily navigate as he fends off the usual obstacles of racist cops and violent thugs with help from his friend Fearless Jones. This entry in the Easy epic may sometimes feel a bit by-the-numbers, but in the end, it also feels somewhat like a prelude to a potentially fresh--and dangerous--chapter in Rawlins' life.
Things are never simple for Easy Rawlins. But his creator remains a master of the genre.
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"Mosley, Walter: FAREWELL, AMETHYSTINE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A789814872/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c9b6b63a. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Mystery/Thriller
Farewell, Amethystine: An Easy Rawlins Mystery
Walter Mosley. Mulholland, $30 (352p) ISBN 978-0-316-49111-2
Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins tackles a multilayered missing persons case in the wistful 16th installment of Mosley's bestselling series (after Blood Grove). When Amethystine Stoller walks into Easy's L.A. office looking for her ex-husband, Curt--a forensic accountant who got mixed up with mobsters running a crooked casino--Easy agrees to help track him down. The case unsettles the PI, stirring up feelings he initially dismisses as a powerful desire for Amethystine. Before long, however, he's plunged into a labyrinth of memories about lost loves and his rough Houston childhood. Eventually, Curt turns up dead, and Easy reaches out to his only ally on the LAPD, Melvin Suggs, for help. Melvin is on the run from corrupt senior officers on the force, and the more Easy hears about his friend's plight, the more he wonders if it's connected to the same mob operations that got Curt killed. As in previous entries, the twists and turns of the investigation take a back seat to Easy's emotional journey, and Mosley sheds keen light on the difficulties of navigating life in America as a Black man. This far into the series, though, Easy's all-but-guaranteed investigative success drains the narrative of some of its dramatic tension. Still, Mosley's fans will enjoy themselves. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins/Loomis Agency. (June)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
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"Farewell, Amethystine: An Easy Rawlins Mystery." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 15, 15 Apr. 2024, pp. 34+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799108415/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=347bbea8. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
WALTER MOSLEY
Farewell, Amethystine
New York. Mulholland Books. 2024.
325 pages.
A MAJOR DISTINCTION between the classic or English mysteries, most popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and the hardboiled American or noir crime fiction has to do with law enforcement and the judicial system. The goal of the classic mystery is the discovery and apprehension of the perpetrator; at the conclusion, he, she, or they--if still alive--are delivered to the authorities. It is assumed that justice will be done.
Such is not the case in hard-boiled fiction. Schooled by the rise of organized crime and its corrupting influence during Prohibition, noir protagonists do not count on "connected" criminals being convicted or serving time. So, justice, with more than a dollop of revenge, becomes a personal goal, to be carried out between the P.I. and criminals.
In this matter, Walter Mosley has an advantage. Whereas most authors have to detail or build a case of official abuse and corruption, all it takes is one unnecessary traffic stop by white policemen to establish the inequality and abuse of law enforcement toward black citizens. Being taken to headquarters for "interrogation" cinches the case, even if the police are not on the side of the criminals. The time period (1960s-1970s) of most Mosley novels adds support for discrimination, given the number of southerners, white and black, who settled in Los Angeles from the 1930s through the 1950s. In one novel, Mosely observes that most had planned to go back home once they made some money but didn't.
Thus, even though "Easy" Rawlins has left his hustling days and established a detective agency, he still has to alternate between two behaviors, natural middle-class and uneducated fieldhand, depending on to whom he's talking. He has to be ready to fight or take a beating, depending on who he's confronting. That such inequality is common leads to widespread distrust of white law enforcement and creates opportunities for Rawlins as a private detective, a fixer, a finder of missing persons.
Farewell, Amethystine, the seventeenth Rawlins novel, begins with a familiar situation. A beautiful woman wants Rawlins to find her ex-husband. Easy is attracted to her, even though he doesn't trust her. His investigation uncovers probable criminal activity involving a planned takeover of a casino and a murder victim. Then another. As is typical, a second problem or case arises. In Farewell, Rawlins learns that his only friend on the police force has gone missing, seemingly with a price on his head. The fact that Rawlins now has an adopted family adds to a sense of potential vulnerability, as things get complicated.
As usual, Rawlins needs help from his friends, most notably an enforcer. Not Mouse, the friend who would rather shoot than investigate, but Fearless Jones, a tough vet who began his fictional existence in a separate novel. Fearless has a more developed sense of right and wrong but is efficiently lethal if the need arises. At a given point, through normal questioning, rough interrogations--police-style--and illegal searches, enough is known or speculated to set up tests and schemes to catch or deal with perpetrators.
The plot unfolds smoothly, lightened by nuggets of wisdom--Raymond Chandler style--that help establish Rawlins's perspective on life in the mean streets of LA. As he drives through a white area with a body in his trunk, Easy muses, "One of the good things about having lived half a century under the weight of second-and third-class citizenship--bad luck was never a surprise. If they wanted me they would get me."
At the end of this novel (semi-spoiler alert), he counts his family as unexpected good luck. He has achieved what his friend Primo had achieved in earlier novels. And he's still alive.
W. M. Hagen
Oklahoma Baptist University
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 University of Oklahoma
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Hagen, W.M. "WALTER MOSLEY: Farewell, Amethystine." World Literature Today, vol. 98, no. 4, July-Aug. 2024, p. 71. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799961853/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cdcde225. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Mosley, Walter. Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right. Mulholland. (King Oliver, Bk. 3). Jan. 2025. 336p. ISBN 9780316573269. $29. M
Ten years ago, as related in Down the River Unto the Sea, Joe King Oliver, a Black private eye, was framed for assault and sent to Riker's. The three months he spent inside changed how he saw the world: he's not so quick to play by the rules anymore. In his third outing (after Every Man a King), he juggles two explosive assignments. A billionaire hires him to find the wife who ran out on him, taking their seven-year-old daughter. He wants his daughter back, but Joe soon realizes he also wants revenge. If Joe turns him down, though, he's signed his own death warrant. Then Joe's 93-year-old grandmother asks him to find his father, Odin, who was imprisoned for homicide when Joe was young. Joe wants nothing to do with Odin, whom he blames for his family's disintegration, but he can't say no to his grandmother, who wants to see her son before she dies. So Joe ends up looking for a father he hates while saving a mother and child from a violent, sociopathic man. VERDICT A gritty crime novel with a pace that never lets up; Mosley's best work since the incomparable Easy Rawlins series.--David Keymer
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Keymer, David. "Mosley, Walter. Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right." Library Journal, vol. 149, no. 10, Oct. 2024, p. 94. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A813629135/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a9ad573e. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right: A King Oliver Novel
Walter Mosley. Mulholland, $29 (336p) ISBN 978-0-316-57326-9
In MWA Grand Master Mosley's smooth, enjoyable latest King Oliver mystery (after Every Man a King), the NYPD detective-turned--PI agrees to help California tycoon Anthony Orr retrieve his young daughter, whom Orr claims was carried off to New York by his second wife. King soon realizes the case isn't as simple as it seems: Orr has a violent past, with rumors swirling that he killed his first wife, and he's sent two hired guns to see that King does his job right. As a result, King agrees to help Orr's wife and daughter stay out of reach of Orr and his men. Meanwhile, King's 94-year-old grandmother urges him to reconcile with his father, Chief Odin Oliver, who's been living underground since his release from prison after a murder sentence. For King, it soon becomes clear that any genuine reconciliation will involve reinvestigating the killing for which Chief was convicted. Mosley brings both plots to tidy conclusions, but the stakes feel somewhat lower this time out, with the racial themes prominent in previous installments replaced by gentler family tensions. Still, series fans will enjoy themselves. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins-Loomis Literary. (Jan.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
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"Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right: A King Oliver Novel." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 42, 4 Nov. 2024, p. 30. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A815444275/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=162999db. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Mosley, Walter BEEN WRONG SO LONG IT FEELS LIKE RIGHT Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (Fiction None) $29.00 1, 28 ISBN: 9780316573269
Tangled in painful memories of his long-missing father, who was released from prison nine years ago, private investigator Joe King Oliver searches for his old man in this follow-up toEvery Man a King (2023).
The 44-year-old King hasn't seen or heard from his hated/loved father, Chief Odin Oliver, since he was 13. After Chief was convicted of robbing a convenience store and shooting two men, his wife (King's mother) had a nervous breakdown, was sent to an asylum, and died. Now, King's ailing 94-year-old grandmother wants him to find her son before she's operated on for cancer. King's search, which leads him through a succession of Chief's friends, lovers, and criminal associates, overlaps with the case of a woman he's been hired to find by the wealthy husband she walked out on, taking their 7-year-old daughter--a job the empathetic detective turns on its ear once it becomes obvious that the shady husband is abusive. With its many interconnected characters and layers of family history, the kaleidoscopic plot--narrated by King--isn't always easy to follow. His desire to sleep with smart and beautiful women he encounters smooths the path. King can't help showing off his sophisticated taste in food, literature, appearances (one woman's dress was "the color of Meyer lemons"), and language ("She was so certain about the space she occupied that there was no gainsaying her position"). At the same time, the novel is rooted in street philosophy ("It's at least three times harder to get outta trouble than it is gettin' in") and the ongoing threat of violence. As with Mosley's great Easy Rawlins series, there's simply no one else writing books like this one.
A dense but deeply reflective sequel.
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"Mosley, Walter: BEEN WRONG SO LONG IT FEELS LIKE RIGHT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A821608467/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a7a0509e. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Gray Dawn: An Easy Rawlins Novel
Walter Mosley. Mulholland, $29 (336p)
ISBN 978-0-316-57323-8
L.A. private eye Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins gets entangled in a knot of interconnected murders in the solid latest installment of Mosley s long-running series (following Farewell, Amethystine). When Santangelo Burris asks Easy to locate his aunt, Lutisha James, the empathetic detective feels compelled to say yes even though it's been more than a year since his last case. Easy's inquiries lead him to a grim Bel-Air crime scene, where he discovers three bodies and a terrified nine-year-old survivor. While Lutisha, a live-in domestic worker, is not among the victims, she's undeniably connected to the murders. The subsequent search lures Easy into multiple skirmishes and shoot-outs before he unexpectedly stumbles on yet another homicide. After being arrested at that scene and taken to county jail, Easy agrees to assist an inmate trying to find his missing father. Upon his release, Easy tracks down Lutisha, only to discover that she's a swindler with a far more complicated past than he anticipated. Mosley's intricate plot feels a little more contrived than usual, but his stirring prose and vivid evocation of 1970s L.A. carry the day, and Easy himself is as charming as ever. Series fans will find plenty to enjoy. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins Loomis Agency. (Sept.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 PWxyz, LLC
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"Gray Dawn: An Easy Rawlins Novel." Publishers Weekly, vol. 272, no. 27, 14 July 2025, p. 90. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A848166836/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=db407d19. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Mosley, Walter GRAY DAWN Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (Fiction None) $29.00 9, 16 ISBN: 9780316573238
The redoubtable, unstoppable Easy Rawlins has more on his plate than usual in the 17th novel of this epoch-spanning--and epoch-making--series of detective fiction.
The start of this latest chronicle in the volatile life of Ezekiel Rawlins finds him in a deep funk, a "June gloom," as he describes it to his adopted daughter, Feather, who's calling long-distance from France where she's traveling with a high school student group. One would think Easy would find life, well, pretty easy now that he's in a fulfilling romance with the alluring Amethystine "Amy" Stoller, his extended family is at peace, and his private detective business is thriving. Still, it's 1970s Los Angeles and, successful or not, Easy is still a 50-something Black man navigating his way through a world that continually sees him as a threat, even when he's just trying to do his job. One of those jobs comes from a "beast man" in grimy overalls and clodhopper boots all but demanding that Easy find his missing "auntie." Easy takes the case with little to go on beyond a suspicion that Lutisha James may be mixing domestic work with some gambling. The more questions Easy asks about Lutisha from longtime friends like the homicidal Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, the more ominous the task becomes; a suspicion confirmed when he finds three family members tortured and killed in a house that was one of Lutisha's last-known whereabouts. Even through the complications of this case, Easy finds time to help his secretary and fledgling detective Niska Redman with her own missing-persons case and help his adopted son, Jesus, get clear from a pair of corrupt federal agents. It's a lot of pins to juggle at once, even for the resourceful Easy. And while he's got plenty of help from friends to cope with cops and other irritants, he can't outrun the vestiges of his East Texas past, as a jolting surprise awaits him at the other end of his search for Lutisha.
By now, it's tempting to take Mosley's inimitable blend of taut lyricism and evocative landscapes for granted. Don't.
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"Mosley, Walter: GRAY DAWN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A849503101/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3c3b7c59. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
* Gray Dawn. By Walter Mosley. Sept. 2025. 336p. Little, Brown/Mulholland, $29 (9780316573238); e-book (9780316573252).
Easy Rawlins hasn't been taking cases since readers last saw him in Farewell, Amethystine (2024), preferring to pass them along to his WRENS-L detective agency partners. But when Santangelo Burris shows up simmering with rage Easy knows too well, he's reminded of his early PI days when he took cases to help poor Blacks whose plights rarely concerned police. Burris wants somebody to find his mother, Lutisha James, claiming that his grandmother wants to hear from her, and Easy accepts. It turns out, though, that card shark Lutisha has a reputation so deadly that Fearless Jones insists on watching Easy's back. Meanwhile, Easy's son Jesus is being hunted by federal agents who allege he's been trafficking drugs from Mexico, and Easy's dangerous lost love Amethystine has returned, determined to reclaim his affection. This would overwhelm most detectives, but even after Lutisha's trail leads to a triple murder and a depraved powerbroker, Easy weaves together a plan that punishes predators and redraws the boundaries of his family. Mosley's moving author's note implores readers to see this work as a reminder of the ongoing toxicity of segregation, lynchings, and generations of casual hatred. In Mosley's masterful hands, this is a portal to Los Angeles streets and their vastly different worlds, communities born of disadvantage, and mysteries that highlight universal truths. --Christine Tran
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Easy Rawlins fans are primed as this epic series hones its edge.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 American Library Association
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Tran, Christine. "Gray Dawn." Booklist, vol. 121, no. 22, Aug. 2025, p. 41. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A857641594/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8ab97a31. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Intrigued by the prospect of a film adaptation of Walter Mosley's complexly philosophical and unnerving novel, The Man in My Basement, one of his imaginative explorations beyond his trailblazing crime fiction, we jumped at the chance to speak with Mosley and Nadia Latif, a London-based theatermaker and director. This is her first feature film.
SEAMAN: Had y ou ever envisioned a film adaptation for The Man in My Basement?
MOSLEY: Certainly at some point I did. But I try, when I'm writing a book, not to think about the book as a film, because then the writing starts to change, and not necessarily for the best.
SEAMAN: The Man in My Basement came out in 2004, a year after What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace. Was there any synergy between these two books?
MOSLEY: Well, they're so different, but the feeling was the same; the feeling was bad, because What Next is about why are we waging this war against Afghanistan? And then Iraq. This makes no sense. So I wanted to say something about it. I tried to get in trouble; I didn't. The Man in My Basement was also very political, but that might just be me, not so much the subject.
SEAMAN: Nadia, when did you first come across Walter's novel, The Man in My Basement?
LATIF: I read it when it was published. I was at university and I saw it lying on a table; somebody had read it and left it for someone else to pick up. I would love to say I read it for a more profound reason than that I thought the cover and title were cool. I picked it up and finished it in probably 36 hours. I thought there was a slipperiness in it. Because you start off feeling like you're reading a really comfortable piece of fiction, and then you end up somewhere totally different, and that to me felt really exciting. And 21 years later, here we are!
SEAMAN : How did this production come about?
LATIF: I heard that another director's adaptation was in the offing. I was like, great, I'm going to see a movie of this book that I love. And then a couple of years passed and the movie didn't come out, and I asked my agent, "So whatever happened?" They said, "Oh, actually, they're looking for a director." I was in the middle of making my first short film, but I thought, just get me in the room. I don't know where I got the balls, but the balls were found and I went in and I pitched the hell out of it. I got flown to L.A. and I met Walter in this meeting room with a really weird table. Then we spent some time together with Walter working on the script, then I worked on the script. Walter has always been very generous with the idea that the book and the film are separate entities.
MOSLEY: Filmmaking is collaborative, while with novels, it's just you. For film, you're not just translating for an audience, but you are. You're not just translating for producers, but you are. You're not just translating for money, but you are. So it's translating back and forth when you're shooting a movie and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Some films do very well by making something different from the book. In this case, I think that the concept of the book survived and exists in a beautiful film that was also able to tell its own story, and I think that that's really wonderful.
SEAMAN: Charles Blakey's spooky house, the film's primary setting, is perfect in every detail.
LATIF : We built that house! That house is custom-made. We built two houses in a wood. I spent a lot of time in Sag Harbor, where the novel is set, and I spent a huge amount of time researching it. Sag Harbor has changed massively. So the house is a real space and it's a psychological space. It was really nice to be able to create a house that we felt did all the things we needed it to do. We shot partly in Wales and partly in Sag Harbor.
SEAMAN: Did you know from the start that you wanted Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins in the lead roles: Dafoe as Anniston Bennet, the white man in the basement, and Hawkins as the Black homeowner, Charles Blakey?
LATIF: There was a point, I think in 2021, when somebody asked me what type of actor was right for Anniston and I said, well, somebody like Willem Dafoe. As if Dafoe is going rock up into this film! But you know, somebody sent it to him and he read it and we got on a Zoom.
Corey I met through the casting process, and it was one of those experiences where your memory of everybody else just falls away. Nobody else exists. The rest of the cast were actors, generally, I've wanted to work with for years, a lot of them theater actors from the UK, and they were brilliant.
SEAMAN: The story revolves around three African masks.
LATIF: Yes, it's such a great classic image, isn't it? It's interesting that there's a huge conversation happening at the moment around restoring artifacts to their countries of origin. Mati Diop's amazing documentary, Dahomey, about restoring some artworks to Benin, brilliantly ends with students discussing whether things like those masks matter at all, which is sort of the argument in Walter's book and the film. These masks could represent a kind of magical past, but how does that help you pay your mortgage? Or how does it help you feel differently about yourself? The masks in the film are authentic; they're from Gabon.
MOSLEY: These passport masks were a way to identify yourself. And these weren't like something in the British Museum. In the story, these are masks that people brought over and people kept and eventually left them to Charles, who may be a descendant of theirs, maybe not; that's a harder thing to know. The idea is that what you had taken away from you is your culture and your language and what you have left is hardly anything.
SEAMAN: Books are central to your lives. Have libraries been important to you, too?
LATIF: My mother's a children's librarian in London. I'm from Sudan, and my mum ran a school there and she was a librarian there, too. I'm an artist because my mother thrust book after book after book into my hands. When we came to London, we went to the public library around the corner from our house. As a theatermaker, I feel that the physical buildings are really important, and people being in those spaces is really important. We've got to find many different ways for people to keep reading. In the film, Charles goes to the library! That's because the library is, well, very important!
MOSLEY: Librarians are the frontline proponents of freedom of speech. Librarians will protect me and they will protect what I create and what I support. And they're also very involved in the future. If people want computers, we're going to get a whole bunch of computers. Whatever people need, it becomes part of the library. The library is always growing with the mind. And I think that is wonderful.
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Seaman, Donna. "THE BOOKLIST INTERVIEW: NADIA LATIF AND WALTER MOSLEY." Booklist, vol. 122, no. 1, Sept. 2025, pp. 14+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A861534289/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=89b42f63. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.