L.A. by Way of Mosley

Walter Mosley is a cool cat, ya know? My favorite genre is crime/detective fiction. I've read a lot of Chandler and Hammet, who are no doubt masters in their own right, but Mosley just makes it all so cool. So real. So surreal. When I picture a Walter Mosley story, I immediately think of Los Angeles at night. I think of palm trees and Tim Burton-sculpted pine trees backlit by pale track lights. I think of large billboards with the devil's red, thin, mustached face carved into them. I think of Smokey the Bear. I think of Los Feliz. Griffith Park. The Greek Theatre. Glendale. Silverlake. Big Foot Lodge. Red Lion. I think of old Disney Cartoons with rich, moody technicolors and characters with exaggerated proportions. I think of vampiric suburbs where day-sleeping evil awakens to Tom Waits-narrated nights.

I'd read DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (our first introduction to Easy Rawlins) for a class in college called "Kiss Me Deadly", and was really taken by the moody, bluesy atmosphere Mosley created in his depiction of 1950's Los Angeles. I decided to re-read the book again earlier this summer, as I wanted to use Mosley's unique atmospheric style as an influence in a new crime script I'm writing.

I'd forgotten how great and how fresh a character Easy Rawlins is. He is flawed. He is human. He's relatable. He's an African American man trying to solve crimes for wealthy, seedy white men in an era where African Americans weren't considered equal. He's a guy like us who needed some fast money to pay his mortgage after being fired from a job. We can relate to him. Hammet's Continental Op or Chandler's Philip Marlowe are both hard-nosed, no-nonsense detectives, never refusing to crack wise or dish out a witty retort. They're larger than life. They don't always feel like they exist in our world. They don't encounter problems like we encounter. Easy Rawlins does. He's one of us. He represents the working class. He's a guy you'd easily find in your local neighborhood bar. He has a real reason to take make a bargain with the devil. He either makes it, or he loses his house: the one constant in his life and his mark of stability. He exists in a real world with real problems. It may seem like a slightly heightened world. But that's L.A. at night.

What I like about Easy is that he uses his common sense and street smarts to solve crimes. He wasn't trained to track down criminals or find clues. He just does it. He uses his inside knowledge of his community and its inhabitants to get the job done.

More to come...