Charcoal Joe

Starred review from April 4, 2016
Set in 1968, MWA Grand Master Mosley’s excellent 14th Easy Rawlins mystery (after 2014’s Rose Gold) finds the favor-dealing L.A. PI working as a partner in the WRENS-L Detective Agency, which combines his initials with those of his two partners. A dangerous friend of Easy’s, Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, introduces him to Rufus “Charcoal Joe” Tyler, who wants Easy to clear Seymour Brathwaite, a 22-year-old doctor of physics doing postgraduate work at UCLA. Seymour was arrested on suspicion of fatally shooting a couple of crooks at a beach house in Malibu. Easy can’t get the whole truth from Charcoal Joe or Seymour, and he soon finds himself embroiled with deadly foes in a quest for missing money and jewels. Easy gets help from such series regulars as police captain Melvin Suggs and Fearless Jones, but Easy does his own heavy lifting in dramatic fashion. As always in this series, racism in all its insidious forms is central. As Easy observes, “Life was like a bruise for us back then, and today too.” This is a must for Easy Rawlins fans and anyone who appreciates fresh, powerful prose. Author tour. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins Loomis Agency.

July 25, 2016
MWA Grand Master Mosley’s 14th Easy Rawlins mystery finds the unconventional, now middle-aged PI at the tail end of L.A.’s Swinging 60s, struggling with a broken heart (his wife-to-be opts for a return to her former partner), racist cops, crooked cops, murderous mobsters, deceitful informants, and a number of beautiful women eager to seduce him. Lucky for Easy, the author’s other series character, Fearless Jones, arrives to assist with charm and smooth efficiency. Reader Boatman, no stranger to Easy’s attitude—knowing, wry, and just a bit shy of sarcastic—adds that and more to the sleuth’s first-person narration. His Fearless has the lift of joyous optimism that comes from being able to accomplish just about any task. Mosley’s plot is more complex than Raymond Chandler at his most perplexing, but, as in Chandler’s books, there are enough unique characters and entertaining scenes to compensate for that. Boatman’s well-planned voices, pacing, and cool delivery make this a must for Easy fans. A Doubleday hardcover.

April 1, 2016
Fasten your seat belts. It's time for another simmering tour of Los Angeles, this time in 1968, with Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins serving once more as the unwilling guide. Things are looking up for Easy. He's running WRENS-L, a licensed detective agency whose name combines his initials with those of his partners, Saul Lynx and Whisper Natly, and he's about to pop the question to his longtime girlfriend, Bonnie Shay. But things don't exactly work out as he expects. Bonnie's back together with tribal prince Joguye Cham, so instead of sending out wedding invitations, Easy reluctantly takes on a job for his boyhood friend Mouse Alexander's equally dangerous friend Rufus Tyler, aka Charcoal Joe. Dr. Seymour Brathwaite, a 22-year-old physicist whose father is one of Joe's many associates, has been found on the scene of a double murder, and the LAPD has him in custody. Joe, "a tombstone just waitin' for a name," who's already enjoying the county's hospitality on unrelated charges, wants Easy to find evidence that will get Seymour released, and it isn't long before Jasmine Palmas-Hardy, who was once Seymour's foster mother, offers Easy $18,000 to bail him out. That's ironic, since Seymour's less menacing than any of the low-level thugs, career criminals, ladies of the night, and police officers thronging the streets of Los Angeles and impeding Easy's path to anything like a simple solution. There'll be three more murders, if you don't count the deaths of two goons who make the mistake of attacking Easy and his capable friend Fearless Jones, and enough minor felonies to land the whole cast in jail forever. Less cluttered than Rose Gold (2014), though that's not saying much. But then you don't read Mosley for the throughline but for his matchless ability to present mosaic worlds in which even the most minor characters arrive burning with their own unquenchable stories.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2016
Easy Rawlins, star of Mosley's celebrated series, has found success and satisfaction with the detective agency he recently formed with two equally adept PIs, but the bottom drops out when he discovers that his true love, Bonnie Shay, has secretly married the African prince she left Easy for in Blonde Faith (2007). Easy's best friend, Mouse, offers an opportune distraction: ruthless local crime boss Charcoal Joe wants Easy to investigate the recent murders of two gangsters. Seymour Braithwaite, son of a friend of Joe's and a young physics prodigy, was arrested at the scene despite his protests that he'd just found the bodies, and Charcoal Joe wants him exonerated. Easy's investigation turns up a money-laundering scheme and a host of killers, from the Cincinnati Mob to Joe's backstabbing conspirators, who are hunting for the dirty cash that went missing after the murders. The shifting tangle of similarly motivated mobsters requires some dedicated focus, but this series' army of followers will happily recognize the case as the mere backdrop for Easy's emotionally charged story, insightful lens into L.A.'s 1960s streets, and always-impressive mental acrobatics.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2016

In his 14th Easy Rawlins mystery (after Rose Gold), Mosley returns to L.A. in the late 1960s, with its racial unrest and discrimination. Easy has opened a detective agency with partners Saul Lynx and Tinsford "Whisper" Natly. A case with lots of racially charged motives lands in Easy's lap when he befriends Rufus Tyler, aka "Charcoal Joe," who knows a top-notch student from Stanford who's been arrested and charged with murdering a white man from Redondo Beach. Joe will pay Easy a generous sum to use his police connections and get the kid exonerated. However, the police found the student beside the victim's body. The story continues with more deception, murders, and violence. Like peeling an onion, Easy uncovers the truth one layer at a time. VERDICT Mosley's exciting and profound mysteries with their poetic prose and historical clarity fascinate readers because Easy moves so smoothly among different worlds. His latest will please his many fans. [See Prepub Alert, 12/14/15.]--Jerry P. Miller, Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2016

In the 14th series installment, Easy Rawlins buys a share in a detective agency, is ready to propose to his longtime girlfriend, and is set to send his daughter to a good school in a good (white) neighborhood. Then two white men are shot to death in Malibu, and black postgraduate student Seymour Brathwaite is charged. Calling in a favor is Seymour's father, an old acquaintance of Easy's by the name of Charcoal Joe. This past April, Mosley made history by becoming the first African American author to be named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. (LJ 5/15/16)

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2016

In this new Easy Rawlins mystery, Easy is setting up a detective agency with money from his latest case (see Rose Gold, 2014) when he meets Charcoal Joe, whose friend's son, stellar Stanford grad Seymour, is in deep trouble. Seymour is accused of killing a white man, and since he was found standing over the victim's body and had racially motivated reasons for revenge, it looks bad.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2016

In the 14th series installment, Easy Rawlins buys a share in a detective agency, is ready to propose to his longtime girlfriend, and is set to send his daughter to a good school in a good (white) neighborhood. Then two white men are shot to death in Malibu, and black postgraduate student Seymour Brathwaite is charged. Calling in a favor is Seymour's father, an old acquaintance of Easy's by the name of Charcoal Joe. This past April, Mosley made history by becoming the first African American author to be named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. (LJ 5/15/16)

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.