Beyond the Book

Walter Mosley is a thoughtful and prolific author whose books have been translated into at least twenty-one languages. His popular mysteries featuring Easy Rawlins and his friend Raymond "Mouse" Alexander began with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990, which was nominated for an Edgar. The TriStar film, "Devil in a Blue Dress," produced by Jonathan Demme, directed by Carl Franklin, and starring Denzel Washington and Jennifer Beals, was released in 1995 and garnered critical acclaim and many awards. Others novels in this detective series, A Red Death and White Butterfly were also nominated for several awards. Black Betty, A Little Yellow Dog, and Cinnamon Kiss were New York Times bestsellers. By the date of this newsletter, Blonde Faith had already risen to #6 on the LA Times Fiction Bestseller List.

Is this the End of Easy?
During Mosley's book tour for Blonde Faith, National Public Radio interviewed him for its All Things Considered broadcast on October 10, 2007. In this discussion, the interviewer, Robert Siegel, recalls that Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) introduced readers to Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins in 1948, when he was a black World War II veteran and fledgling detective in Los Angeles, and he asks Mosley if Blonde Faith, the 10th Easy Rawlins novel, might be the final chapter in this popular series. In answer, Mosley tells him, "There [are] no more Easy Rawlins books in my head… I guess it's always possible that I could write another one, but I'm not thinking about writing another one, and this feels like a nice ending to me." In a separate discussion with Publishers Weekly, Mosley confirms, "I really feel that this is the best Easy Rawlins novel, which makes me happy to kind of go out on it. It's not that it's my favorite book, I think it's my best novel. And I've never said that before."


Coming Soon from Walter Mosley:

• The Right Mistake (Oct 2008), third in his Socrates Fortlow series following Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Walkin' the Dog.
• The Long Fall (March 2009), the first in a new series starring Leonid McGill, a Manhattan African-American PI.

This article was originally published in November 2007, and has been updated for the August 2008 paperback release. Click here to go to this issue.

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