...because I said I'd probably change my mind in twenty four hours and it's been almost exactly twenty four hours...Forgive me for a moment while I engage in a small bit of phenomenological bracketing (or maybe this is something like deconstruction) and put aside for a moment the race of the characters and the socio-historical context that the story is set in and just focus on the skeletal remains of the book. What I'm left with is the story of a tax evader who the law catches up with and offers...

Not as good as the first one and didn't really hook me like the first one but still an enjoyable series and I'm interested in what will happen next.

An excellent Easy Rawlins mystery that has a lot of moving parts and complexity but avoids becoming too convoluted.

Mosley recreates the atmosphere of L.A. and Watts in 1953 with it's red baiting, blacklisting and racism. Easy Rawlins is a likeable, but highly flawed character. The mystery keeps you on the edge of your seat.

I'm loving this series and I'm not a series person. Easy Rawlins is lovable even when he messes up. You're still still behind him. Mosley continues to paint a vivd picture of blacks living in racist America in the 1940s, specifically in and around Los Angeles. The story has recurring characters, murder, and enough ups and downs to keep any reader interested. I love the old crime detective feel of the novel. If you're participating in March Mystery Madness you might want to check these out.

Mosley takes the traditional hard-boiled detective mystery and gives it a refreshing spin by spotlighting African-American communities. His lead, Easy Rawlins, is a Louisiana/Texas transplant now working in L.A. as a janitor, maintaining the building he surreptitiously owns. As any decent detective fiction, the city plays a prominent role in the life of the detective and Mosley nicely captures a range of African-American experiences in period L.A. Easy is in a tough spot and is hoping Mofass, th...

It’s been said that nothing is certain but death and taxes. Easy Rawlins has dealt with plenty of death as a black World War II veteran who also has been mixed up with very bad people in post-war Los Angeles. But this time he’ll have to deal with taxes, too. Which is worse? Ask Al Capone.Set in the early ‘50s, it’s been a few years since Easy’s introduction in Devil in a Blue Dress, and he has set himself up nicely by taking advantage of an illicit windfall to buy some apartment buildings as wel...

Book 2 to a epic series. Walter Mosley is an awesome author who has written an awesome series of crime at it's best.

This was few steps back from Devil in a Blue Dress. It was an okay story but nothing significant or thrilling overall. Easy was more of an observer in this plot, stumbling upon dead guys and women who were throwing themselves at his feet a little too much. The IRS agent portrayed as the racist antagonist didn’t feel very convincing either.

Easy Rawlins is such a great character for a noir novel simply because Walter Mosley writes him with such a clear and unique voice.Even in this relatively disappointing follow-up to Devil in a Blue Dress he is highly enjoyable as a man primarily looking after himself in a series of intrigues, fights, double crosses and sexual encounters used as an exploration of race differences in American society in 1952.In this novel EVERYONE is the bad guy, including Easy. He might be looking to protect hims...

The second installment in the Easy Rawlins series and this book takes the development of the main character a whole lot further, with Rawlins attempting to discover why the IRS is after him for unpaid tax whilst, at the same time, attempting to run down a supposedly communist agitator. Brilliantly plotted and well written, this book almost makes you smell what it must have been like to be black and poor in early 1950's LA, with the overt racist attitude of the police and the IRS on one side and

Wow, I love this series. Despite the plot being a little clunky, the action never slows. The second book in the Easy Rawlins series, this time it is 1953 and Easy is up to his neck in trouble with the IRS and the FBI is on his case to help them weed out communists in the local community of Watts. Mosley's real talent in this series is how he manages to portray the racial aspects of life as a black man in 1950s America; sadly highlighting how very little has changed. The dialogue is a joy and the...

Fair warning is due - it takes you a third of the way before this book takes fire and the ending (which shall not be revealed here) is the usual sub-Chandleresque rush of confused data that plays the same role, in this genre, as the 'deus ex machina' once did in courtly drama - BUT the core of the book is brilliant.Why is Mosley so good when he is good (and when he is not stuck in the usual problem of series writers that he has to recapitulate so much for late entrants)? Because he writes with p...

A step back in appeal for me after Devil in a Blue Dress , but still an interesting trip to the West Coast black ghetto in the fifties, at the height of the Communist witchhunt.Easy Rawlins is already established as the main character in this second mystery/thriller featuring him, so I expected some better pacing, easier to follow plot. It was instead a bit of a muddle with several separate murders that feel shoehorned / forced into one narrative. So what is really the connection between an appa...

The GR description says this is set in 1953. However, this was first published in 1991 and not especially in any 1950s style that I have read. Example: This is definitely not erotic, but there are more erections in the 275 or so pages than any 1950s novel would give you. Easy Rawlins was definitely more lusty here than I remember from Devil in a Blue Dress.It seems there are plenty of plot threads and I had a hard time keeping up with them. I wasn't alone. Easy didn't seem to see how everything

Easy Rawlins is a fantastic character. This series is a great read!

Easy Rawlins, a black World War II vet in early ’50s LA feels like a second class citizen and is powerless to do anything about it. He bought a couple of apartments from the proceeds he earned illegally at the end of the first book and rents them out. He can’t disclose the earning hence he does not pay taxes. Straight laced IRS agent Lawrence catches him and his only way out is going undercover for FBI agent Craxton. He has to find actionable evidence on suspected communist sympathizer Chaim Wen...

I didn't like this as much as the first one, but it was still a good read. It was a bit complicated, especially for an audiobook, but not bad. What I like most about both so far is that it takes me to a world that is very different; a different time, different place, and a different culture. It's still very accessible and understandable, though.

I have apparently read several Easy Rawlings books. But this is the first one that I have listened to in the audible format. This is an interesting series for a white man to listen to. It is a bit of a invasion of the life and world of a black man but I am not sure if it is believable or even vaguely accurate. I would guess that it is not accurate because to think otherwise would seem somewhat racist and full of fallacious beliefs of black culture.Easy is yet another one of those characters with...

So far, these Walter Mosley novels aren’t detective stories; they are crime and suspense stories. They are as brutal as Spillane, but Mosley’s black protagonist has criminals of all kinds and the white establishment of the time to battle. That means he cannot have a friend on the police force of the time and place; most of them hate him because he is black. His friends are black people, yet they live in a dangerous world where they have to protect themselves, sometimes from each, but almost alwa...