During the 1992 election Bill Clinton could be seen clutching a copy of Devil in a Blue Dress. I believe there are three reasons why he loved the book. Firstly, Mosley is easy to read. Secondly, Clinton surely recognised himself as one of the corrupt and crooked politicians in the book. And finally, he probably thought no novel could match his own torrid and sordid climb to the presidency. Mosley comes close.
Mosley was born in 1952 in Watts, Los Angeles. He grew up during the 1960s race riots and went to university but dropped out. He did not start writing until his mid-30s. His memories of childhood are political: he remembers feeling irritated that nobody reacted when `niggers were put into the black dumb class at school, and whites were put into the white smart class. They just said OK and I'm still smarting about this after 30 years.'
Mosley started writing after reading Alice Walker's The Colour Purple. He wrote a short novel, Goin' fishin', which featured Easy Rawlins, the main character of his five detective books. The work was rejected because he was told there wasn't a market for anybody writing about black men. Mosley ignored what the publishers said and rewrote his early work as Devil in a Blue Dress. Mosley says, `I don't write to change the world. I want to ask questions about it. I write mostly about black men in America. I write about black history in the 20th century which is overlooked, forgotten or only the subject of oral history.'
Anybody who has read Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett will not be surprised that the 1920s and 1930s, times of great crisis for America, produced such hard-boiled detective writing. Walter Mosley stands in this tradition. But Easy Rawlins is no Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Chandler was only allowed to write about the white experience. Mosley writes about both sides, black and white, and gives a more complete picture. The character Easy Rawlins, or Ezekiel (those of you who have read your bible will know that Ezekiel was the prophet who went to Babylon), has a history he has a mother and father. Mosley uses this to write a novel examining the history of black people in the US to the present day. Each one of his books is set in a year of great political importance for the struggle against racism. Devil in a Blue Dress is set in 1948, the year of complete desegregation of the armed forces; A Red Death has as its background the state beginning to desegregrate public schools.
White Butterfly takes place in 1956. Easy Rawlins is out to catch a serial killer who is allowed to kill as long as he only kills black women. Nothing is done until he murders the daughter of an important prosecutor. 1956 was also the year of the Montgomery bus boycotts which formed the start of the civil rights movement that went on to smash segregation. Black Betty and A Little Yellow Dog are set when Kennedy was president and Martin Luther King was leading the civil rights movement. Mosley says he wanted to write about ordinary working class people but in a new and fresh way. He writes with rhythm in mind.
If James Ellroy describes himself as the Knight of the Right, then perhaps we have a challenger in the shape of Walter Mosley, who can write with pace and plot but still retain his integrity.
Devil in a Blue Dress starts with Easy Rawlins being 28 years old, a Second World War veteran like Mosley's father and Manning Marable's father. This generation were told they were fighting for freedom and against fascism and this became the watchword for the movement against racism and discrimination. Easy Rawlins becomes part of the great migration from the South to the cities. He moved from Texas to LA and became an aircraft engineer in the new industries of the American dream, but was sacked by a racist boss for not working a 24 hour shift. He was forced to turn detective to pay his mortgage.
Mosley continues to develop the character of Easy Rawlins as he ages through the books. He gets married, adopts two children, his wife leaves him, he is constantly confronting racism and brutality. I have never read casual racism so well described. The LAPD is exposed as a brutal and racist institution. The beatings and the harassment are so normal it is like breathing. Mosley explains crime as the twin brother of poverty. As Easy moves through the mean streets each story is played off against contemporary Los Angeles. As Barry Grifford said, `His words prowl round the page before they pounce.'
Easy's friend Mouse is a killer who could `open up a man's belly with a knife and then sit down to a plate of spaghetti.' Mosley uses Mouse to explain crime. Mouse makes you laugh, he's so vicious. But he is a product of the rotten system.
Mosley also argues against the death penalty. Of Mouse, the killer's attorney says, `He's a killer and in a better world he would hang. But the people who run this world have no right to put anybody to death. They are the ones who should die.' I hope you didn't miss this part of the book, Mr Clinton, because this is pretty strong stuff. Mouse declares in A Little Yellow Dog, `Your government has killed more people than a murdurin' man could count and ain't no general ever been taken to court.' His books are full of these gems.
One of the best speeches for socialism is made by Jackson, a worker. When asked why black people should be in favour of Communism, Jackson says:
`You know it's the same ol' shit. You got people that ain't got nothin' but they want sumpin in the worst way. So the banker and the corporation man got it all and the worker man ain't got shit. Now the working man has got a union and he should get what he should get. Now that's real communism. Now the rich man don't like it because he doesn't want to give nothin'.'
There are serious flaws with Walter Mosley's writing. The genre of crime fiction lends itself badly to a serious critique of class society. Mosley says when questioned about the pulpish nature of some of his books, `That's what poor people do they drink, they get high and they have sex.' This is not all they do they fight back, not just on an individual level but collectively. The 1940s and 1950s were boom times. Most black people were workers not gangsters. Some of the characters are wooden and tend to be aimed at titillation. But Mosley's books point to and develop the tradition of the richness of the American detective novel. The thing he is writing about is the social disarray that is at the heart of America.