Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins
Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins is a fictional character created by the American novelist Walter Mosley. Rawlins is a half African-American private investigator, a hard-boiled detective, and World War II veteran living in the Watts, [Los Angeles, California|Watts] neighborhood of Los Angeles. He is featured in a series of best-selling mysteries set from the 1940s to the 1960s.
The mysteries combine traditional conventions of detective fiction with descriptions of racial inequities and social injustice experienced by African Americans and other persons of color in the Los Angeles of that period. While Rawlins is clearly in the tradition of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer, he differs sharply from these earlier fictional detectives in that Rawlins is an unlicensed private investigator with no background or training in law enforcement.
Mosley has written sixteen novels and a collection of short stories featuring Rawlins, his most popular character. He originally featured Rawlins in a novella called Gone Fishin', but it was rejected by several publishers because they didn't think that there was a market for books about black men. When Mosley rewrote the story as a detective novel, he found a publisher.
Mosley once stated he intended to bring the character into contemporary times, but later said the 2007 novel Blonde Faith, which is set in 1967, would be the last. Nevertheless, in 2013 a new Easy Rawlins novel entitled Little Green was published, followed by Rose Gold, Charcoal Joe, Blood Grove, Farewell, Amethystine, and Gray Dawn,.
Character biography
Easy Rawlins was born on November 3, 1920, in New Iberia, Louisiana. His mother died when he was eight years old; soon afterward his father fled to escape lynching after fighting with a white man. The fight was the result of a dispute with his father's supervisor over earnings. Easy had accompanied his father to his job at the slaughterhouse and saw his father argue with the man. When the man called his father the N-word his father punched him. After the scuffle Easy and his father ran off, with his father kissing Easy one last time, and telling him to go home. Easy never found out what became of him.Easy's older half-brother and half-sister went to live with cousins in El Paso while Easy was taken in by his mother's brother-in-law, a violent man named Skyles. After a few weeks, Easy ran away from Skyles's farm and spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence living on his own in the Fifth Ward of Houston, Texas. After accompanying his friend Raymond to Pariah, which resulted in the death of Mouse's stepfather, Easy decided to leave Houston to move to Dallas, Texas. He lived there a short while before enlisting in the armed forces. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army, fighting in North Africa, Italy, and finally, the Battle of the Bulge under George S. Patton and Omar Bradley; after the war, he moved to Los Angeles where he purchased his first home and worked at an aircraft assembly plant. Easy got into his own dispute with his supervisor at the Champion aircraft assembly plant. He was asked to stay behind after his shift, but felt tired, and did not trust his ability to check his work. Easy was fired for not remaining to complete the work. Concerns about his unemployment and mortgage payments influenced him to take up his first case as an amateur private investigator.
''Devil in a Blue Dress'', 1990
Set in 1948, Devil in a Blue Dress introduces Easy Rawlins, a newly unemployed factory worker, let go from his job building aircraft because his white supervisor found him "uppity". Needing money to pay his mortgage, Easy agrees to search for Daphne Monet, the missing mistress of a wealthy white politician. No one is willing to tell Easy just why so many people want to find Daphne, and the trail leads him through the intersection of crime, corruption, and race politics in Los Angeles. In the course of the search Easy reunites with a childhood friend, Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, a charming but conscienceless stone-cold killer, recently arrived in LA from Houston. The events of the book set Easy on his new career as a trader in outside-the-law "favors".The book was adapted into a 1995 film of the same name, which starred Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins, and also featured Jennifer Beals, Tom Sizemore, Maury Chaykin, and Don Cheadle as the unhinged "Mouse".
''A Red Death'', 1991
Set in 1953. With the money he made in Devil in a Blue Dress, Easy has become a landlord. He owns several apartment buildings in Los Angeles, running them through a hired front man while he works as the buildings' handyman and janitor. As the book opens, Easy is audited by the IRS, a problem because he cannot account for how he came to own his property in the first place. Darryl T. Craxton, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, offers to get him out of trouble with the IRS on the condition that Easy investigate an espionage problem at a major aircraft manufacturer. Craxton also wants to prove that labor union organizer Chaim Wenzler is a communist spy. Easy reluctantly agrees, and the job brings him into conflict with several old friends and his own conscience.''White Butterfly'', 1992
Set in 1956. Easy is married and living in a house in Los Angeles with his wife, their baby daughter, and their adopted son Jesus. A black Los Angeles Police Department detective named Quinten Naylor reluctantly taps Easy to investigate a murder spree: four women have been killed, apparently by a serial killer. Easy resents that the LAPD has only started investigating for real because the fourth victim is white. Easy solves the murders despite pressure from the fourth victim's parents, who don't want it known that their daughter had a child with a black man.''Black Betty'', 1994
Set in 1961. Now divorced, Easy lives in a rented house in LA with his adopted son Jesus and adopted daughter Feather. Easy is pressed for cash because most of his money is tied up in a real estate deal, which he's running through a front because he doesn't want any white investors to know that the primary stakeholder is black. He's approached by a white private detective to help search for a missing black woman, an older woman that Easy once had an adolescent crush on, during his youth in Texas. Needing the money he takes the job, and he tracks the woman into a tangled mire of wills and inheritance and questions of who's really related to whom. At the same time Easy has to rein in his murderous friend Mouse, who has just been released after serving five years in prison for manslaughter; not knowing who called the police on him, Mouse has decided simply to kill everyone who might have done it. Easy manages to sort out the missing-person case and stop Mouse from killing half the neighborhood, but he loses his real-estate investment when his agent sells him out to a group of rich white men.''A Little Yellow Dog'', 1996
Set in November 1963. Easy, concerned for his adopted children's future, has given up his career as an outside-the-law "fixer" and secured a state job with a pension, working as the supervisor of the janitorial staff at Sojourner Truth Junior High School. One of the teachers at the school turns out to be involved in a heroin-smuggling/theft operation run out of the school property, which leads to several murders; an overzealous rookie detective suspects Easy of being involved, and Easy sets out to solve the murders, break up the ring, and get himself out of trouble. In the course of the job he meets Bonnie Shay, a flight attendant unwillingly involved in smuggling, and they start dating. At the climax Easy's friend Mouse appears to be mortally wounded, but Mouse's wife EttaMae carries him out of the hospital over her shoulder and disappears.''Gone Fishin’'', 1997
Set in 1939. Easy, nineteen years old, joins his friend Mouse on a journey from Houston to Mouse's tiny home town of Pariah to confront Mouse's abusive stepfather Reese, a journey that gives Easy his first encounter with murder. The story begins with Mouse asking Easy for a ride to Pariah. At the time Easy lives in a small apartment and is doing gardening work in Houston. Mouse is planning his wedding to Etta Mae, and is in need of money. He decides to get the money from his abusive stepfather Reese Corn. Easy agrees to drive Mouse for $15 in a car borrowed from a friend. On the drive, Easy and Mouse meet Clifton and Earnestine, who are hitchhiking, with the intent to go to New Orleans. Clifton is on the run after beating up a man in Houston. In the small town of Pariah Easy meets many of the people who made Mouse who he is, including the witch Mamma Jo, her hunchback son Domaque Jr, the Blues musician Sweet William, and many other colorful characters. Easy becomes jealous of the hunchback Domaque's ability to read and recite the bible. This leads to Easy deciding to learn to read better himself. Easy and Mouse are separate for much of Easy's time there, with Easy getting sick and needing to be healed by Mamma Jo. While recovering Easy sees Clifton again, who has been living outside, on the run from the law. With assistance from Mamma Jo Easy gets better in enough time to try to stop Mouse's plan to bring violence to his stepfather, but the events of this trip haunt him. Following this adventure, he remains in Houston long enough to attend Mouse's wedding as his best man, but the next day he gets on a train to Dallas and leaves Houston behind. Not six months after that Easy enlists in the US Army and fights in World War II. Easy recalls the tale while on leave in Paris.The novel is not strictly speaking a mystery, but rather a Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. Pariah is also the home of several characters who appear in other Rawlins stories, such as Momma Jo the witch and Sweet William the blues musician.