Blood Grove

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By Walter Mosley

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"Master of craft and narrative" Walter Mosley returns with this crowning achievement in the Easy Rawlins saga, in which the iconic detective's loyalties are tested on the sun-soaked streets of Southern California (National Book Foundation) 

It is 1969, and flames can be seen on the horizon, protest wafts like smoke though the thick air, and Easy Rawlins, the Black private detective whose small agency finally has its own office, gets a visit from a white Vietnam veteran. The young man comes to Easy with a story that makes little sense. He and his lover, a beautiful young woman, were attacked in a citrus grove at the city’s outskirts. He may have killed a man, and the woman and his dog are now missing. Inclined to turn down what sounds like nothing but trouble, Easy takes the case when he realizes how damaged the young vet is from his war experiences—the bond between veterans superseding all other considerations.
 
The veteran is not Easy’s only unlooked-for trouble. Easy’s adopted daughter Feather’s white uncle shows up uninvited, raising questions and unsettling the life Easy has long forged for the now young woman. Where Feather sees a family reunion, Easy suspects something else, something that will break his heart.
 
Blood Grove is a crackling, moody, and thrilling race through a California of hippies and tycoons, radicals and sociopaths, cops and grifters, both men and women. Easy will need the help of his friends—from the genius Jackson Blue to the dangerous Mouse Alexander, Fearless Jones, and Christmas Black—to make sense of a case that reveals the darkest impulses humans harbor. 
 
Blood Grove is a novel of vast scope and intimate insight, and a soulful call for justice by any means necessary.
 

Excerpt

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1

I looked down from the third-floor office window onto the hastily built greenhouse in our back-fence neighbors’ yard. The hothouse frame was constructed from pine four-by-fours. This structure was tightly wrapped in semiopaque plastic sheeting that fluttered only slightly in the morning breeze. The structure reminded me of an army barracks at maybe one-third size. Standing around six and a half feet high and wide, it was four times that in length, with a partially flattened triangular roof. These current neighbors, seven long-haired hippies, had moved in five months before. They built the nursery and wired it for perpetual electric light on the first day. Nearly every daylight hour since then they went back and forth armed with bags of soil, watering cans, clay pots, insecticide brews, and various pruning devices.

At night they sometimes had parties. These festivities often spilled out onto the front porch and lawn but never the backyard. The hothouse was off limits to anyone except the Seven.

They were an interesting-looking crew. Three young women and four men; all somewhere in their twenties. All white except for one young black man. Wearing embroidered jeans and threadbare T-shirts, they spent an hour or so almost every afternoon sitting around a redwood picnic table eating food prepared, served, and shared by the women. They poured wine from green-glass gallon jugs of Gallo red and passed hand-rolled cigarettes from one to the other in an endless circle.

I liked the city farmers. They reminded me of life in my childhood home—New Iberia, Louisiana.

LA was a transient city back then. People moved in and out with predictable regularity. Five months was a long stay for tenants without blood ties or children.

When the back door to the hippie house came open I looked at the round white face of my Gruen Chronometer mit Kalender. It was 7:04 a.m. on Monday, July 7, 1969. The hippie I’d dubbed Stache came out of the split-level ranch house wearing only jeans. The nickname was because of his generous lip hair. I was standing at that window because Stache came out early every morning toting a long-necked tin watering can, wearing neither shirt nor shoes. This ritual had tweaked my detective instinct.

  

When Stache bent down to get the garden hose I turned away from the window but remained standing behind the extra-large desk. A case had taken me out to Las Vegas over the past week. This was my first day back at the agency and I was the only one there so far that morning.

For a moment I considered sitting and writing down the specifics of the Zuma case, but the details, especially the payment problem, felt like more than I could handle on my first day. So instead I decided to take a walkabout, reacquainting myself with the offices before my colleagues arrived.

Our bureau occupied the entire upper floor of what once was a large house on Robertson Boulevard, a little way up from Pico. My workspace was the master bedroom at the very back. Walking up the hall from there I first passed Tinsford Natly’s office. Tinsford was generally known as Whisper and his room embodied the understated tone of that name. This office was small and windowless, furnished with a battered oak desk barely larger than a writing table you’d expect to find in a junior high classroom. There were two straight-back wooden chairs, one for Tinsford and another to accommodate any visitor or client who found their way to him. He rarely spoke to more than one person at a time because, he said, “Too many minds muddy the water.”

The tabletop was bare, which was unusual. As far back as I could remember, Whisper would have a single sheet of paper centered on his desk. It was always a different leaf with writing that seemed to say something pedestrian but most often held deeper meanings. There were no pictures on the walls, no file cabinet or carpet. His office was like a monk’s cell where some ageless cleric considered the scriptures—one verse, sometimes just one word, at a time.

A little ways up and across the hall, Saul Lynx’s office was three times the size of Whisper’s and a quarter that of mine. His desk was mahogany and kidney-shaped. Saul had a blue love seat and a padded leaf-green chair for clients. A burgundy swivel chair sat behind the burnished desk, which was crowded with knickknacks and photographs of his Negro wife and their multiracial children. There were at least two hundred books on the shelves next to the window. He had five maple filing cabinets, a huge standing globe of the world, and a small worktable with an overhead lamp where he mapped out his investigative campaigns.

Saul’s office was cluttered but neat. His tabletop and desk were most often disheveled because Saul was usually in a hurry to get out in the street, where detectives like us went up against the jobs we took on. But that Monday morning everything was in its proper place—almost as if he’d left for a vacation.

  

I wandered from the back offices up to the repurposed foyer, where Niska Redman’s desk sat.

Niska was our secretary, receptionist, and office manager. A few years earlier Tinsford got her father out of a jam and she went to work for him. When I had my windfall and decided to start the WRENS-L Detective Agency, she came along with her boss. The caramel-cream biracial young woman was perfect for our needs. She was a night-school junior at Cal State, friendly, and completely reliable. She knew all our quirks and needs, temperaments and habits. Niska was that rare worker who did the job without direction and was more than capable of thinking on her own.

  

I sat down at her sleek cherrywood desk facing the front door to our offices. Taking in a deep breath, I noted how it felt good being alone and unhurried. Everything was fine, so I’m not quite sure why the darkness entered my mind . . .

  

Four years before, I’d been drunk for the first time in many years, driving barefoot down the Pacific Coast Highway at night, far above the rocky undergrowth along the shore. I tried to pass a tractor trailer, met oncoming traffic, and was forced off the pavement onto the soft shoulder, which then gave way to nothingness.

Some hours later Mouse, under the direction of the witch, Mama Jo, found me.

The coma lasted for weeks but I was still aware under that pall, feeling as if I had crossed far beyond the border of expiry. The moments of a wasted life littered the floor around my deathbed.

That same debris surrounded me in Niska’s sunlit office space. Breathing became a chore and the memory of a life filled with pain and dying seemed to grasp at me from an incalculable depth. It was as if I had died in the accident and so whenever the specter of that time returned I had to struggle once more against the desire to let go. I could have breathed my last right then and there. Later I’d be found by my friends, having passed away from no apparent cause.

Though assailed by hopelessness I was not afraid. The suffering of my people and my life pressed like tiny embers burning away at the release the numbness of death promised. I took one breath and then another. My chest and shoulders rose and fell slowly. In sunbeams coursing through the windowpane I saw motes of dust illuminated by the light. These floaters were accompanied by unimaginably small insects going about their winged search for sustenance, succor, and sex. Hearing the intermittent sounds of the house creaking in the morning breeze, I somehow slipped back into the rhythm of living.

After all that I was both exhausted and relieved. It was a reminder that the most desperate battles are fought in our hearts and souls, and that death is only one final trick of the mind.

“Hi, Mr. Rawlins.”

I glanced at my white-faced watch before looking up at Niska Redman. It was 8:17. Nearly an hour had passed since I commandeered her office chair.

Niska wore a one-piece shamrock-green dress that didn’t quite cover her handsome knees. I liked the freckles around her nose and the smile that said she was honestly happy to see me. Hanging from her left shoulder was a rather large buff-colored canvas sack.

“Hey, N. How you doin’?”

“Fine. I made brown-rice pudding last night.” She swung the shoulder bag out onto the desk and opened it wide. Therein I saw her polka-dot blue-and-white purse, a few books, an exercise mat, a fine-toothed comb and an Afro pick, two brushes, a makeup bag, and a quart-size Tupperware tub. This last item she brought out and set before me.

“Want some?” she asked.

“Maybe later.” I stood up from her chair and she moved to stand next to it.

“Were you looking for something in my desk?”

“No. Just getting a different perspective is all. Where’s Tinsford? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten in before him unless he was on a case.”

“Uh-huh, excuse me, but I have to go to the restroom.”

She went down the hall of offices to the door just beyond Whisper’s. I pulled a guest chair from the far wall and set it before her workstation, still feeling the tremors from my mortal battle with demons of the past.

The phone rang once and I reached over to answer.

“WRENS-L Detective Agency.”

“Easy?”

“Hey, Saul. Where you callin’ from?”

“Niska didn’t tell you?”

“She just got in.”

“I’m up north. At the Oakland shipyards.”

“Oakland?”

“The IC called last Wednesday,” he said. “They’ve been underwriting a policy for Seahawk Shipping Lines. Too much cargo’s gone missing over the past eighteen months and they want us to look into it.”

The IC was actually the IIC, the International Insurance Corporation, an indemnity provider owned by Jean-Paul Villard, president and CEO of P9, one of the largest insurance consortiums in the world. JP’s number two was Jackson Blue, a good friend of mine. The IIC had us on commission and so whenever they called, one of us answered.

“You ever hear of a group called the Invisible Panthers?” Saul asked.

“No.”

A toilet flushed in the back offices.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“They say they’re some kind of left-wing political group that don’t want to be known.”

Niska came out from the hallway and pointed at her ear with a query on her face.

“It’s Saul,” I said to her, and then I asked him, “It’s a whole political organization?”

“I really don’t know. Maybe paramilitary. Is Niska there with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell her hello for me.”

“Those radical groups up there are dangerous. Maybe you should have somebody with you. I could ask Fearless.”

“No. At least not yet anyway. I’m just making some contacts buying black-market Japanese electronics. Nothing to worry about so far.”

“Okay. But don’t cut it too close.”

“Don’t worry. Tell Niska I’m saving the expense reports for when I get home.”

“Okay. Talk to you later.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Lynx!” Niska shouted before I hung up.

“He says he’ll have the expense reports when he comes back.”

“That’s what he always says. Tinsford’s gone too.”

“Where?”

Niska started organizing her desk while answering my question.

“This older white lady named Tella Monique came in last Tuesday,” she said. “She wanted for him to find her son Mordello because her husband had disowned him and threw him out when he had married a Catholic woman nine years ago.”

“Nine years?”

“Uh-huh. But now that her husband died she wants her son and his family back.”

“So where’s Whisper doin’ all this?” I asked.

“He’s in Phoenix ’cause the son was mixed up with a motorcycle gang called the Snake-Eagles, somethin’ like that, out there.”

“A black motorcycle gang?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Damn. I hope he got his will up to date.”

Niska grinned and said, “Nobody ever sees Mr. Natly. They won’t even know he was there.”

“Any news for me?”

“Not really. You got the check from Mr. Zuma?”

“Um . . .”

Charles “Chuck” Zuma was a millionaire who had a twin sister named Charlotte. It took Charlotte most of her thirties to run through her half of their sizable inheritance. Then she used a loophole in the family trust to turn Chuck’s twenty-eight million into bearer bonds. After that Charlotte Zuma disappeared.

Her brother offered me two-tenths of one percent of as much of the money as I could return. I took the job because there was no violent crime attached. I was trying to take on easy jobs that didn’t include, for instance, motorcycle gangs and left-wing paramilitary groups.

“Did you get the money?” Niska asked again.

“Technically.”

“Technically how much?”

“The sister learned from her wasteful years,” I said. “Her investment advisers increased Chuck’s money to nearly forty million.”

“That’s an eighty-thousand-dollar fee.” She did this calculation without using her fingers.

“The forty million is all tied up in funds that a whole army of forensic accountants have to disentangle.”

“But all you need is eighty thousand.”

“Chuck’s broke. He’s living with a rich cousin up north of Santa Barbara.”

“So we don’t get paid?”

“It’ll take at least a year before he gets his and we get ours. But he gave me collateral.”

“What kind of collateral?”

“A pale yellow 1968 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI.” I might have grimaced a little while reciting the name.

“A car?”

“They only made a few hundred of ’em,” I said. “And none in America. It’s worth at least twice what Zuma owes.”

“But you can’t put a car in the bank.”

“I could sell it.”

“A car.”

“Yeah.”

“You parked it downstairs?”

“It’s in the shop.”

“A car that doesn’t even work?”

“I’ll be in my office.”




2

I liked Niska. She considered every problem before offering an answer and therefore almost always did a good job. But I wasn’t in the mood for good service or comradeship. That morning I had a yen for isolation. Just hearing her footsteps down the hall wore on me. When she went to the restroom a second time I had to put down the book I was reading because of the whining of the pipes and the sound of the door clicking shut. Even the faint whiff of her essential-oil perfume seemed to crowd my space.

By 10:17 I made a decision. It took a few more minutes to tamp down the unreasonable anger before going out to the front office.

Niska was typing at great speed on her IBM Selectric. She typed, organized, and filed away our notes, correspondence, and case journals. At seventy-five words a minute, the rapid-fire clack of the letter ball on paper set my teeth on edge.

“Niska.”

“Yes, Mr. Rawlins?” She stopped the racket, looking up innocently.

Behind a forced smile I asked, “You like that Transcendental Meditation stuff, right?”

The surprise pushed her head back two or three inches.

“Um,” she said. “Yeah. How come?”

“They have those two-week-long getaways where everybody does yoga, right?”

“There’s some exercises but mostly they meditate. I went to two weekend retreats but the week-longs are very expensive. And I only get two weeks’ vacation anyway. I was thinking of going to one around Christmas maybe.”

“How expensive is it?” I asked.

“Hundred and thirty dollars—a week.”

“What if I gave you two weeks off and enough money for the retreat—on top of your salary? You could call ’em and go right up there this morning.”

“But what about the files and the phone?”

“Files can wait and I learned how to answer a phone before you were born.”

This was something new for the receptionist/office manager. Her eyebrows creased and her freckled nose scrunched up.

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“I want to be alone, honey. That’s all. Whisper and Saul are already out, probably for a while. I think it would be good for both of us.”

“So you just want me to pack up and go?”

“Right after I draw the money you need out of the safe.”

She hemmed, hawed, and argued mainly because there was little precedent for a boss letting employees off from work on a whim back in 1969. And two hundred and sixty dollars plus two weeks’ salary for doing something you loved was unheard-of. But the offer was too good to pass up, and so by noon she was off and I could return to my office in solitude.

I leaned back in my ample oak throne and sighed deeply.

“Alone at last,” I said aloud.

“Either for good or not for long,” a bodiless voice intoned.

In life that voice belonged to an old man I knew only as Sorry. He was the wisest man of my childhood, whose advice would come to me every couple of years or so to remind me that I didn’t know everything and so to watch out for banana peels and blind corners, jealous husbands and comely wives.

More than once I worried that that voice was an indication of severe mental disease. But then I’d remember that we lived in a world filled with insanity; where war, nuclear threat, and the slaughter of children crowded every day with distress.

In the America I loved and hated you could make it rich or, more likely, go broke at the drop of a robber baron’s hat. That’s why I had a pile of cash hidden somewhere safe, no rent or mortgage payment, and no property tax either. And that was just the material of life. My true wealth was a small family, a few friends, and a phone number that was unlisted even to the police.

These were just normal precautions. One thing I never forgot was that I was a black man in America, a country that had built greatness on the bulwarks of slavery and genocide. But even while I was well aware of the United States’ crimes and criminals, still I had to admit that our nation offered bright futures for any woman or man with brains, elbow grease, and more than a little luck . . .

  

There was a sound out past the hallway toward the front of the offices. One of the settling cracks of the foundation, most probably. But then again maybe there was no sound at all but just my intuition.

I looked up and saw the shadow of a man standing a few feet back from the doorway, the only exit from my office.

Go left or go right but never move straight ahead unless there’s no other way, Mr. Chen often taught in his self-defense class. Look for the upper hand instead of trying to prove that you are the strongest. The other man is always stronger, but you will best him from either the right or the left.

The problem was that I was sitting in a chair at a desk with my closest pistol in the bottom drawer. Whoever had walked in was good; he hardly made a sound. Even if I fell to the right and grabbed at the drawer he could have shot me right through the wood.

He took a step forward. I could see that he was tall and lean with a pantherish gait, but still his features were hidden in shadow.

“Are you Easy Rawlins?” he asked.

With those words the unannounced visitor crossed the threshold. He was in his early twenties with very short sandy-blond hair and an ugly bruise on his left temple. He wore a peach-and-white checkered short-sleeved shirt over a white undershirt. His blue jeans were stiff, ending at silent white sneakers. I already knew he was a white boy by the spin of his words.

“You always just walk in on people like that?” I replied.

“The door was unlocked,” he said. “I said hello when I came in.”

He took another step and I sat back again. His empty hands hung loose at the sides.

“I’m Rawlins. Who’re you?”

He took another step, saying, “Craig Kilian.”

One more step. It felt as if he was going to walk right up on my desk.

“Why don’t you take a seat, Mr. Kilian?”

The offer seemed to confuse the young man. He looked to his left, identified the walnut straight-back chair. After a moment he went through the necessary movements to sit himself down.

“You just out the military, Craig?”

“Uh-huh. You say that ’cause’a my crew cut?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

There was a haunted look in Kilian’s eyes that would have probably still been there if he hadn’t been walloped upside the head. All through World War II I’d encountered soldiers from both sides of the battlefield who had that look, who had been shattered by the din of war.

Craig took a pack of True cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Plucking out a cancer stick with his lips, he drew a book of matches from the cellophane skin of the pack. He lit up, took in a lungful of smoke, and exhaled.

Then he gave me a quizzical look and asked, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

I did mind. I’d been trying to quit for a couple of years. But there was something about Craig’s glower that made me want to give him some leeway.

  

Watching him suck on that cigarette, I was reminded of an early morning in October 1945. It was outside of Arnstadt, Germany, and I was on guard duty after a long night of heavy rains. The war was just over and so we weren’t as sharp as we had been in battle. My brand was Lucky Strike. As I smoked I was wondering what it would be like to go back home to Texas after outflanking and outfighting the white man, and becoming friendly with his women too.

I don’t know what made me look to the right—a sound, an intuition—but there I saw a German soldier in a filthy and tattered uniform bearing down on me with a bayonet raised high. I turned just in time to grab the knife-wielding hand by the wrist. In that instant we had seized each other, locked, almost motionless, in a struggle to the death. My cigarette fell onto his coat sleeve. I don’t know what I looked like to him, but his gaunt face was desperate and, oddly, almost pleading. He pressed harder and harder but I matched him sinew for sinew. Probably the deciding factor in that brawl was the fact that I was well-fed and he was not. He might have been trying to kill me in hopes of getting a few rations.

The smoldering sleeve started to burn. Smoke got into my left eye. I winced and he pressed harder. We were both shaking under the exertions, literally on fire. I noticed a tear coming from his eye. At first I thought it was in reaction to the smoke, but then I saw, and felt, that he was crying. He shook harder and I was able to press him down onto the rain-soaked mud. There I got the upper hand, forcing the blade toward his throat. He was trying his best to protect himself while blubbering.

I could have killed him as I had a dozen others in hand-to-hand combat. Death dealing was second nature after years on the battlefield. But instead I pushed his bayonet arm to the side, slamming it down on the wet earth, extinguishing the fire. He released the dagger, curled into a ball, and cried for all he was worth. I sat there next to him for long minutes. When he finally sat up I handed him my rations and indicated that he could leave. I should have taken him as a POW, but lately our troop had been executing anyone they deemed a Nazi.

  

Genre:

  • Winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award
    Featured in the New York Time's Book Review's Paperback Row
    One of The Seattle Times' Best New Paperbacks

    “Mosley is a master of craft and narrative, and through his incredibly vibrant and diverse body of work, our literary heritage has truly been enriched...From mysteries to literary fiction to nonfiction, Mosley’s talent and memorable characters have captivated readers everywhere, and the Foundation is proud to honor such an illustrious voice whose work will be enjoyed for years to come... what sets his work apart is his examination of both complex issues and intimate realities through the lens of characters in his fiction, as well as his accomplished historical narrative works and essays.”

    National Book Foundation
  • “Lest one think Mr. Mosley’s middle-age hero—sensitive and contemplative though he may be—is not still up to whatever challenge may confront him, he warns: ‘Easy is my name, not my nature.’”—Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
  • “The ability to simultaneously keep us readers in confusion and in thrall marks Mosley — winner of the National Book Foundation’s 2020 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters — as a mystery master….The central mystery in Blood Grove — as in all the Easy Rawlins books — is as much about the brazen contradictions of American society as it is about what happened in that orange grove one night. But that mystery turns out to be pretty gripping too.”
     —Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post
  • "Rawlins is the greatest contributor to Los Angeles’ literary culture and its native son’s repute.”—Paula Woods, LA Times
  • "Mosley’s inimitable rat-a-tat prose style is in full force here, and he keeps his passionate commitment to social issues right up front. A worthy addition to a nonpareil series."

    Adam Woog, Seattle Times
  • “In the 15th outing for his iconic private detective, Easy Rawlins, Mosley once again chronicles a part of America rendered invisible — and overpowered — by whiteness. The book is set in 1969, with Rawlins on the verge of 50, still struggling with professional and romantic and familial conflicts in a Los Angeles about to be beset by the berserk.”
     —The New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice
  • "Walter Mosley’s books about Easy Rawlins are crime fiction, not history. But taken together, they’re a vivid picture of Black life in Los Angeles in the mid-20th century....Easy Rawlins takes a long strange trip in Blood Grove, and it’s a thrill to take it with him."
    Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times
  • "Mosley effortlessly moves the series to 1969 in Blood Grove, showing just how far Easy has come....A solid mystery, Blood Grove will show long-time readers just how much they have missed Easy."

    Oline H. Cogdill, The South Florida Sun Sentinel
  • "If Walter Mosely’s Blood Grove is your first Easy Rawlins’ book, by the time you finish you’ll rejoice that you have 14 more to catch up on. If you’re already an aficionado, Mosley’s latest detective creation is the life diversion you know you need now.... [Easy] is smart, self-possessed and, with Mosley’s ear for dialogue, unabashedly funny. Blood Grove is ripe to be plucked as one of Mosley’s finest and most important novels.

    Tom Mayer, Mountain Times
  • "Get Blood Grove, and you might as well just put that bookmark in a drawer....For fans, Mosley goes the extra step, offering a chance to catch up with the dark characters that Rawlins has called “friends” in past novels. If you’re not a fan, grab this book and you will be quick. Just don’t grab it after dark: Blood Grove will keep your eyes open all night."

    Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Tennessee Tribune
  • "If Walter Mosely’s Blood Grove is your first Easy Rawlins’ book, by the time you finish you’ll rejoice that you have 14 more to catch up on. If you’re already an aficionado, Mosley’s latest detective creation is the life diversion you know you need now....Blood Grove is ripe to be plucked as one of Mosley’s finest and most important novels."

    Tom Mayer, Ashe Post & Times
  • “Mosley’s authorial superpower remains his razor-sharp perception…. This novel is more than a simple mystery meant for entertainment; it and its serial predecessors advocate for the Black hero in literature and in life. … a strong entry in a robust series and an even stronger entry into the genre that further solidifies Rawlins as an enduring figure, one who has survived and thrived in a world that sees him as less than the hero he is.”
     —Aaron Coats, Chicago Review of Books
  • "What’s perhaps most remarkable about Blood Grove—as with all Easy Rawlins novels—is Mosley’s undiminished gift for embedding the poignant messaging of the protest novel in hard-boiled crime fiction without ever sacrificing punch or pace....Blood Grove does its many antecedents proud—not least among them, Easy Rawlins’ formidable first 14."

    Steve Nathans-Kelly, New York Journal of Books
  • "Both Chandler and Mosley amply reward readers with the beauty of their prose and with the world views of their iconic heroes, men of honor struggling to do right in an unjust world....For Easy Rawlins, it has meant trying to do the same with the added complication of being a Back man in race-torn, post-World War II Los Angeles.”

    Bruce DeSilva, AP News
  • “Mosley has his finger on the pulse of racial and cultural issues of the late ‘60s, and the book is sure to make readers ponder just how much has and hasn't changed today.”—Christina Ianzito, AARP
  • "It is a fair bet that if Walter Mosley has a book coming out during any given month, there’s an excellent chance it will be the best mystery of that month. Case in point: his latest. Nothing is quite what it seems in this place, in this time, in this book....I read it all in one sitting, as I just could not stop turning the pages.”
     —Bruce Tierney, BookPage
  • "Mosley’s latest, Blood Grove, may just be one of the best novels in an already iconic detective series....Mosley manages to unfurl a genuinely captivating plot that travels a dark odyssey through the subcultures of 1969 LA, while also adding poignant new depth to the stories of long-running characters. Blood Grove is as satisfying as noir gets."

    Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads
  • “Mosley does a fine job highlighting a world of Black survivors who know how difficult their struggle remains, every day of every decade. This marvelous series is as relevant as ever.”
     —Publishers Weekly
  • “Easy's finely calibrated understanding of and commentary on the social and racial climate around him gives the novel its defining texture and power… A new Easy Rawlins novel is always big news in crime-fiction circles, and this fifteenth entry in the series does not disappoint.”
     —Booklist
  • Praise for TROUBLE IS WHAT I DO
  • "Gritty . . . The plot soars . . . Few mystery writers can examine issues of race--how it divides and binds people--as clearly and unflinchingly as Walter Mosley."—Oline Cogdill, Associated Press
  • "Great stuff . . . The vibrant characters and pulsating dialogue are primo Mosley."—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

On Sale
Feb 1, 2022
Page Count
320 pages
Publisher
Mulholland Books
ISBN-13
9780316491167

Walter Mosley

About the Author

WALTER MOSLEY is one of America’s most celebrated writers. He was given the National Book Award’s 2020 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and honored with the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, the Robert Kirsch Award, numerous Edgars and several NAACP Image Awards. His work is translated into 25 languages.  He has published fiction and nonfiction in The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Nation. As an executive producer, he adapted his novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, for AppleTV+ and serves as a writer and executive producer for FX’s “Snowfall.” 

Learn more about this author