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Title: Little Scarlet
ISBN: 0446198242
Author:
Walter Mosley
Publicate Date: 2008-08-06
Publish: 2008-08-06
List Price: $13.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $7.53
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $6.50
Amazon Merchant Price: $11.19
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| Customer Review: |
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1: He can do no wrong..
I started reading Walter Mosley in 1994. I think that becoming a new mother slowed me down from reading my favorite Easy Rawlins mysteries until recently. I have collected all the Walter Mosley I could find and have re-started with Little Scarlet. This book reminds me of why I started reading Mr. Mosley in the first place and want to kick myself for not keeping up.. lol. To me, Walter Mosley can do no wrong (well.. except for Blue Light.. haha). I'm a loyal fan and want a plate of anything/everything he's serving up.
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2: Series' Best
The Easy chronicles have been going along at a good, if at times leisurely clip, when Mosley offers up this scorching instant classic. The portrait of Watts in the aftermath of the riots unleashes something in Easy (and the author) and each page offers insight, anger and great writing. As always the supporting characters who populate the story are richly drawn in little strokes, but for maybe the first time in the series we get a potent villain. And while the historical context of the book is powerful, it never overwhelms the plot which is a high tension grabber. These days it seems Mosley isn't as in vogue as when he debuted, and I'm not sure this book got the critical praise lavished (justly) on peers like Lehane and Pelicanos. But this is as good as it gets and stands as a masterpiece of American fiction, crime or otherwise.
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3: Easy Rawlins During the Watts Riots
Walter Mosley delivers crime fiction set during a turning point in America's racial history. His protagonist, Easy Rawlins, is a man who, more often than not, would like to be left alone--he just keeps getting caught up murders that require his special expertise in detection. The great pleasure of reading Mosley is the classic, sharp-paced action mixed with commentary on the problems of being African American in a racist society.
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4: One of his best
Walter Mosley, in my opinion, is a good writer. Like most good writers, however, he has his strengths and weaknesses. I think that his weaknesses have at times been exaggerated in recent books that he's written. I don't think he's at his best when his books are solely about race and being black. I also think that when he writes a detective novel that has the *element* of race in it, but isn't completely built around it, he is one of the better detective novelists in the country. Little Scarlet marks the return, as far as I'm concerned, of Easy and Mouse and the whole gang. It reminded me a lot of Devil in a Blue Dress, which I thought one of the best books of the decade when I first read it.
Little Scarlet is a woman who's been discovered dead during the Watts Riots. It appears that she was killed by a white man who raped her after she rescued him at the height of the violence, and the times are changing. Instead of LAPD chasing Easy and bracing him as a suspect, they grab him and insist that he try and find the killer, with the idea of keeping the lid on the end of the violence that the riots brought. He insists that he doesn't want to be paid, and then goes to work, investigating the case.
Mosley is a wonderful writer, and this is one of his better books. I enjoyed it a great deal. Besides Easy, we have episodes with Mouse (you know he was an organized looter, of course, selling what he'd acquired during the riots), and of course Easy's family. The whole thing is a wonderful return to his earlier form.
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5: pure Mosley- pure joy!
As the author of NATIVE INTELLIGENCE, Native Intelligence I am a big fan of mystery books. And I LOVE Walter Mosley. My biggest fear is that one day I will run out of his 'Easy Rawlins' mysteries. "LITTLE SCARLET" is one of his best. It grabs you from the first page, catapulting you back to the time of the Watts riots when tension between whites and Blacks was raw and constant. Walking the edgy line between the two, while trying to solve the murder of a beautiful Black woman, 'Easy' is once again on a search for clues to her death all over L.A. Mr. Mosley's descriptive style paints a vivid picture of Life in those times and in those places...from the suburbs to the slums. Thankfully, when the situation gets too intense, he throws in a hilarious line to let you catch your breath. Once again, I devoured this offering just as I have the ones that came before...thankful that I had ordered "Cinnamon Kiss" and have that to look forward to. But there is a certain sadness that I have to leave "Little Scarlet" behind, knowing that I have ended one more sojourn in 'Easy's' world.
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