Bad Boy Brawly Brown

Starred review from June 17, 2002
Finally. Five years after the last taste (1997's Gone Fishin') and six years after the last full meal (1996's A Little Yellow Dog), Easy Rawlins makes a very welcome return. Now 44 years old, Easy no longer makes a living from doing people "favors." Now he owns a house, works for the Board of Education in Los Angeles and is father to a teenage son, Jesus, and a young daughter, Feather. It's 1964, and while some things have changed, the process is slow and uncertain. Too slow for some, including Brawly Brown, the son of Alva, the girlfriend of Easy's friend, John. Hotheaded Brawly has become involved with a group calling itself the Urban Revolutionary Party, and John and Alva fear the group's unspoken aim is violence and revenge. Friendship and loyalty being still sacred to Easy, he agrees, as a favor, to try to locate and talk to Brawly. As usual, Easy's path is not easy. When a body surfaces, Easy finds himself in the middle of a vicious puzzle where lives are cheap and death the easiest solution. As always, Mosley illuminates time and place with a precision few writers can match whatever genre they choose. He also delivers a rousing good story and continues to captivate with characters readers have grown to love, including the now "dead" Mouse, who still plays an important role in Easy's chronicle. Agent, Gloria Loomis. (One-day laydown July 2)Forecast:This one should shoot up bestseller lists, backed by a 10-city author tour and a major advertising and publicity campaign. The reissue and repackaging of six Easy Rawlins novels this fall, each with an original stand-alone story focusing on the fate of Easy's friend Mouse, will keep the momentum going.

March 15, 2002
Out of the picture since 1995, when Mosley took a break from writing mysteries, Easy Rawlins is back and back in trouble. The son of a friend has managed to get himself mixed up with a radical group, and when Easy promises to investigate, he winds up as a murder suspect.

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2002
Adult/High School-Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins has accomplished many of his goals through hard work and perseverance, and in spite of being a black man in a white-dominated world. When Alva Torres needs help to locate her son, Brawly, Easy gladly steps in as unofficial private eye. The young man turns out to be mixed up with a radical political group, and Easy tries to find a way to ease Brawly and himself out of the mess. After two men are murdered and the police search for everyone with a connection to either death, Easy comes up with a violent answer that saves Brawly's life and covers his own tracks. Mosley weaves together the racial tensions felt in 1964 Los Angeles with the complex threads of Easy's life. Rawlins's multilayered personality and history provide the character's mental and physical drive, which in turn drives the plot. Supporting characters bring their own depth and substance and give readers additional insight into the period. A fine balance of historical fiction, murder mystery, and character study, this novel offers action and a lot of thoughtful material.-Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Copyright 2002 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2002
Mosley fans have been eagerly anticipating the return of Easy Rawlins, last seen in " A Little Yellow Dog "(1995) trying unsuccessfully to carve a separate peace for himself away from the violence of South Central L.A. in the mid-60s. That's the situation again, as Rawlins is once more lured back into the street life when a friend needs help. Teenager Brawly Brown has left home and is running with the radical Urban Revolutionary Party. Easy quickly finds the boy, but he is just as quickly caught up in the murder of one of the party's leaders. There is a poignant world-weariness to Rawlins here. He responds to "the gruff bark of the American Negro's soul," yet he also sees Brawly as part of an "army of young fools . . . fighting and dying for ideas they barely understand, for rights they never possessed, for beliefs based on lies." This episode replays the themes and recaptures the mood of the previous installment more than we've come to expect from the constantly evolving Rawlins series, but it nevertheless stands on its own as a powerful human drama and a vividly re-created historical moment .(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2002
This latest outing in Mosley's ongoing detective series (Devil in a Blue Dress) could be subtitled Easy Rawlins's Family Values, as the concept of family whether the one you are born into or the one you choose for yourself echoes throughout. Set in 1964, the core of the plot finds Easy on a mission to lure the title character back to his mother. But not only is Brawley bad, he's big and not so easily swayed, especially since joining the Urban Revolutionary Party, a political group wary of strangers. Add to that a cache of stolen guns, secret government investigators, a payroll heist, several murders, problems with his son, and everybody lying about everything, plus his own crushing guilt over the apparent death of his best friend, and you've got Easy behind the eight ball once again. The author continues to probe the African American experience, and while a crime is at the heart of this book, its soul lies in deeper issues. Nonetheless, Mosley is always a good read. Recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/02.] Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.