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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Jun 2001, 320 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2002, 400 pages
Walter Mosley, "one of crime fiction's brightest stars," returns to mysteries at last! Fearless Jones is a dazzling new thriller, set in 1950s L.A. and featuring the most engaging hero since Easy Rawlins.
Paris Minton is minding his own business -- a small used bookstore of which he is the proud proprietor -- when a beautiful woman named Elana Love walks in and asks a few questions. Within the next twenty-four hours, Paris has been beaten up, made love to, shot at, and robbed, and his bookstore has been burned to the ground. He's in so much trouble he has no choice but to get his friend Fearless Jones out of jail to help.
Fearless Jones is an army veteran, a man who is proud of his accomplishments during World War II and refuses to step into the background now that the war is over. Violence dogs Fearless's every step, and Paris has tried to keep his distance. But there's no friend like the one you need.
The two set out to find the elusive Elana Love, and every step leads them deeper into a bewildering vortex of money and betrayal. Their questions bring out a ruthless and racist cop, a gang of vicious ex-cons, and an elderly Jewish woman who is as determined to help the two friends as others are to harm them. These two black men in 1950s Los Angeles have few rights, little money, and no recourse under attack. But they have their friends, their wits, and their knowledge of the way the world really works to help them prevail.
Written with the blazing pace of noir classics like The Maltese Falcon, Fearless Jones also possesses the humor and original insights into American places and characters that have made Walter Mosley one of the most admired writers of our time.
Chapter One
MY USED-BOOK STORE had been open for just about a month when the police showed up. I hadn't called them, of course; a black man has to think twice before calling the cops in Watts. They came to see me late that afternoon. Two well-built young men. One had dark hair and the other sported freckles.
The dark one wandered around the room, flipping through random books, looking, it seemed, for some kind of contraband. "Where'd you get all these books, son?" the other cop asked, looking down on me.
I was sitting in my favorite swivel chair behind the makeshift table-desk that I used for book sales and purchases.
"Libraries," I replied.
"Stole 'em?" the dark-haired cop asked from across the room. There was an eager grin on his face.
"Front'a each page marked discarded," I said, editing out all unnecessary words as I spoke. "Library throws away thousands of books every year."
I reached for a paper folder at the far end of the table, ...
Jeffery Deaver, author of The Blue Nowhere and The Bone Collector
For those of us who've been dying for a new Walter Mosley mystery, we can finally relax. And, believe, me, Fearless Jones was worth the wait! In his lean, droll style, Author Mosley offers up his razor-sharp observations of street life in the Los Angeles of the '50s, a rock-'em, sock-'em plot and--it goes without saying--a cast of characters that we feel we've known all our lives.
If you liked Fearless Jones, try these:
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