Rose Gold An Easy Rawlins mystery

Review by New York Times Review

AT THE END of DARKNESS, DARKNESS (Pegasus Crime, $25.95), John Harvey advises us that this will be the final novel in his masterly series featuring Inspector Charlie Resnick. Is there any way we could take a vote on that? We'd hate to lose this Nottingham policeman whose love of jazz and compatibility with cats (named after the likes of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie) distinguish him as the mellowest of detectives. Hard as it is to let our hero go, the elegiac tone struck in this melancholy story makes it clear that Harvey has no intention of giving Resnick (or his surviving cat) a reprieve. To take the sting out of this parting, the detective's last case sends him back to the miners' strike of 1984, when he was much younger and less disenchanted. Jenny Hardwick was a real firebrand back then, and Resnick knew her as an impassioned orator exhorting miners' wives to keep their men out of the pits and on the picket line - never mind that Christmas was coming and the Thatcher government wasn't backing down. When he next lays eyes on her, some 30 years after she dropped out of sight, Jenny is a pile of bones, unearthed during the demolition of a block of houses. Casting the narrative in two time frames allows Harvey to show us both the Resnick that was (an intelligence officer, reluctantly sending undercover agents to spy on the desperate miners) and the Resnick that is (an older and wiser man with even more regrets). Assigned to the task force under a former protégée, he searches out all the old suspects and witnesses, even as he keeps losing himself in the long-ago. Harvey is too particular a stylist to limit his story to the old days. Every action has its parallel, every voice has an echo, and all the sharply drawn working-class characters are as complicated today as they were back then. "Long memories, some people," one former miner says of his neighbors, and maybe himself. "Resentments, buried deep." Once upon a time, those geezers puttering around in their gardens were young and dangerous, and it's Resnick's job to find the murderer among them. But reliving the past has been a painful experience, and by the end of the novel he seems genuinely content to sit on a bench "watching the good folk of Nottingham go about their daily business" without him. WHEN IT COMES to naming names, Walter Mosley knows no peer. A cop called Frisk, a guru who goes by Vandal, a boxer known as Hardcase Tommy Latour and a black militant with the excellent moniker of Most Grand all figure in ROSE GOLD (Doubleday, $25.95), Mosley's endlessly entertaining new Easy Rawlins mystery. This one, set in Los Angeles in 1967, comes with a Patty Hearstinspired plot about a poor little rich girl who adopts the cause of the black nationalists holding her for ransom. They call themselves Scorched Earth and threaten to take down the government, but one insider thinks otherwise: "As far as I could see really it was just a gang robbin' places and talkin' all big." Mosley has a great time making fun of the hippies in Laurel Canyon and the silly girls who declare their independence by enslaving themselves to "despots and dictators" in dashikis. But Easy is never happy unless he's doing favors for people with no one else to turn to, so there are plenty of secondary plots with frantic characters, all talking a blue streak. As always, Easy is their man. FOR SUCH a blunt-talking and down-to-earth detective, Peter Diamond manages to get involved in some pretty highbrow cases. He's the big cheese in Peter Lovesey's civilized English police procedurals set in the city of Bath, and past cases have found him hunting murderers among philatelists, literary scholars and the musicians in a string quartet, THE STONE WIFE (Soho Crime, $26.95) puts him in the company of art collectors fighting (to the death, in one case) over a medieval sculpture depicting the Wife of Bath that may provide evidence Chaucer had a house in the city. Once Diamond has read what this lusty lady tells her fellow pilgrims in "The Canterbury Tales," he becomes quite taken with her: "Whatever you thought about her, she wasn't repressed." The murder mystery is solved along traditional lines, but it's the wonderful tidbits of Chaucerian scholarship that enliven the novel. And whatever you think of Peter Diamond, he proves himself a "verray, parfit, gentil knyght." READING THE 15 Stories in PRISON NOIR (Akashic, cloth, $26.95; paper, $15.95) is a sobering experience. Unlike most claimants to that much-abused term, this is the real thing - the work of men and women incarcerated in correctional institutions across America. The anthology's editor, Joyce Carol Oates, long active in prison writing programs, is no pushover, so much of the material holds up on a literary level, notably "The Investigation," an austere narrative about an existential moment in the life of a longtime prisoner. It's the work of William Van Poyck, an inmate in a Florida prison who was executed last year. The power of this collection comes from the voices of these authors, voices suffused with rage ("3 Block From Hell," by Bryan K. Palmer), despair ("There Will Be Seeds for Next Year," by Zeke Caligiuri) and madness ("Shuffle," by Christopher M. Stephen). Perhaps the most harrowing is Andre White's "Angel Eyes," the stunning account of an old-timer who helps a youngster survive the culture of violence that now defines his life.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 28, 2014]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Los Angeles private investigator Easy Rawlins' world is the African American subculture of the 1960s. Unable to rely on official channels in a society steeped in racism, Easy instead trades in an intricate currency of favors and friend-of-a-friend networking. When a representative of Chief of Police Parker makes Easy an offer he knows he can't refuse, the savvy PI also knows the hefty paycheck he'll receive won't compensate for the trouble the case will bring. Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a weapons' mogul, has supposedly been kidnapped by Bob Mantle, a former boxer and leader in African American radical politics, who is suspected of three cop killings. But when Easy starts poking around, he finds that Mantle is not all he's been cracked up to be. Calling in favors from a host of series regulars, Easy hunts Mantle, hoping to find answers for a string of clients cropping up with connections to the case. This case is significant for introspective Easy, who has recently recovered from nearly fatal injuries (see Little Green, 2013) and finds signs for his life's new direction amid the hippies, twisted cops, and radical groups connecting Mantle to the heiress. Mosley has few peers when it comes to crafting sentences, and he's woven some beauties into this swift-moving yet philosophical story that does more for illustrating an iconic period than hours of documentary film could. This Easy Rawlins novel harks back to the great early days of the series.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2014 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Set in L.A. during the height of the Vietnam War, Mosley's impressive 13th Easy Rawlins mystery (after 2013's Little Green) finds Roger Frisk, special assistant to the police chief, calling on Easy with a job. Rosemary Goldsmith, a student at the University of California in Santa Barbara and the daughter of munitions giant Foster Goldsmith, is missing, perhaps kidnapped. Frisk wants Easy to track down black boxer and political activist Robert Mantle, with whom Rosemary was recently seen in Los Angeles. Easy, "the man to go to if they [the LAPD] want their finger on the jugular of the colored community," accepts the carrot and stick offer only to discover that FBI agents and the State Department are also involved. Along the way, Easy's trademark ability to trade favors has him helping disgraced cop Melvin Suggs, locating a stolen mixed-race child, and solving a marital problem for his pal Jackson Blue. Easy's experiences and insights perfectly mirror the turbulent '60s. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins Loomis Agency. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Easy Rawlins, who once spanned years between volumes, takes his third case of 1967. Or rather, his third batch of cases. What are the odds that the LAPD would not only press Easy (Little Green, 2013, etc.) to take a job, but offer to pay him for it? But that's exactly what Roger Frisk, special assistant to the chief of police, does. If Easy will look for international weapons manufacturer Foster Goldsmith's daughter, Rosemary, who's gone missing from UC Santa Barbara, Frisk will pay him $6,000, with a bonus of $2,500 if he actually finds her. Smelling a rat but agreeing to take the case, Easy soon realizes the police are much less interested in Rosemary than in retired boxer Battling Bob Mantle, the companion who may have kidnapped her. Easy is quickly up to his neck in other LAPD officers, FBI agents and State Department officials, united only in their demand that he drop the case on security grounds. In the course of his investigations, Easy incurs numerous debts that he can pay off only by working other jobs. His trusted police contact, Detective Melvin Suggs, wants Easy to find Mary Donovan, who passed counterfeit money and stole Suggs' heart. His ex-lover EttaMae Alexander's white friend Alana Altman wants Easy to find her boy Alton, who she suspects may have been kidnapped by her late husband's African-American relatives. Local crime lord Art Sugar suggests that Easy pass everything he learns about Bob Mantle on to him first. You have to feel bad for underemployed UCLA MBA Percy Bidwell, who insists that Easy introduce him to investment banker Jason Middleton but doesn't have anything to trade for the favor. Along the way to the untidy resolution, the most quotable of all contemporary detectives ("I knew I was in trouble because I was being told a fairy tale by a cop") stirs up enough trouble for scene after memorable scene. Mosley may not write great endings, but it's hard to top his middles. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1 Back then, Moving Day in L.A. was a phantom holiday that occurred, for many Angelenos, every other month or so. In the 1950s and '60s, when the rent was dirt cheap, people moved to be closer to a new job, away from an old lover, or when it seemed that a fundamental change of life was in order. Sometimes the person moving would not only change the numbers on his or her door but also the name on the mailbox, the used car in the driveway, and even the style of clothes they donned to walk out and meet the day. Now and then the move was not merely aesthetic or convenient but necessary; like when a bill collector, lawyer, or the law itself was hot on the temporary tenant's trail. At a time like this the migrant leaseholder would make sure that the new domicile was inside the border of a different unincorporated town or municipality of L.A. County. That way the law offered few systems to track his whereabouts. A man could actually avoid dunning or even arrest by merely moving across the street. In the case of a necessary move, the rental émigré would load up a truck in the middle of the night and go with no fanfare, or notice to the landlord. This was not the case with my midmorning migration. My daughter and I were moving, that Sunday, from Genesee at Pico to Point View just a few houses north of Airdrome; not more than eleven blocks. This was a necessary move that was not due to any legal or monetary bureaucracy. Five months or so earlier I had almost died. At that time I had been involved in a case that put my home in jeopardy, and so I had sent my daughter to stay with her brother at a friend's place, temporarily. I resolved the case but then drove my car off the side of a coastal mountain. Whether this accident was due to a subconscious death wish or just bad luck is uncertain, but I was in what the doctors called a semicoma for the better part of two months. During that time a squatter named Jeffrey had taken possession of the empty house on Genesee. With the help of my friend Raymond Alexander, Jeff was put out. This was not a gentle eviction and I worried that Feather, my adopted daughter, might one day be home alone when the squatter returned for revenge. And so I sold the Genesee house and bought a new, larger place on Point View. I might have ranged farther but that September, Feather was going to enter the seventh grade at Louis Pasteur Junior High and the new address was just a block away from there. And so some friends--­LaMarque Alexander (Raymond's son), Jesus (my adopted boy, now a young man), Jackson Blue and his wife's associate Percy Bidwell--­helped Feather and me load our belongings into a rented truck and drive it over to the new door. I would have hired a moving company but recently, within the last week, the city had seen fit to inspect all five of the rental properties I owned and demanded I fix structural problems, perform a termite-­extermination, and in one place they even required that I install a new heating system. It would take every cent I had, and then some, to pay for the improvements, so I rented a truck from my old pal Primo and called on my friends to lend a hand with the move. Feather set herself up in the entranceway of the rare two-­story residence and directed the men where to deposit the bureaus, tables, beds, boxes, and chairs. My daughter had light brown hair and skin. She was tall for twelve and lean, not to say thin. She was becoming an accomplished long-­distance runner as her brother, Jesus, had been, and was fluent in three languages already. Neither she nor her brother had one drop of blood in common with me, or each other, but they were my kids and we were family. "Uncle Jackson," Feather said from the front hall, "that little table goes in Daddy's room upstairs. He uses it for his desk." "Upstairs?" Jackson exclaimed. He was around my age, mid-­forties, short, jet black, and skinny as a sapling tree. "Girl, this table might look little but the wood is dense, and heavy." "I'll help, Uncle J," Jesus said. My boy was pure Mexican Indian. He was no taller than Jackson Blue but his years of working his own small fishing boat had made him strong. Jesus got behind the table, taking most of the weight, and Jackson groaned piteously as he guided it up the stairs. "This is a really nice house you got here, Mr. Rawlins," Percy Bidwell said. He was almost my height, a brassy brown, and good-­looking. His hair had been processed into tight curls. I always distrusted men who processed their hair. This was a prejudice that I realized was not necessarily justified. "Thank you, Percy. I like it." "Jewelle said that you haven't moved in years. I guess this house was just too good to pass up. Must've cost quite a bit for a place this big in this neighborhood." I also didn't like people asking about my business. Percy was racking up the negative points on my friendship register. "Do you work for Jewelle?" I asked. "No." He seemed almost insulted by the question. Jewelle MacDonald had come from a real estate family and on her own had amassed an empire of apartment buildings and commercial properties. She was even part-­owner of a major international hotel that was being constructed in downtown L.A. Jewelle was barely out of her twenties and married to the onetime roustabout, now computer expert Jackson Blue. It was no insult to ask if Bidwell worked for her. She had sent him to help Jackson, after all. "Jewelle told me that if I wanted to get in contact with Jason Middleton," Percy said, "that you were the one who would do that for me." His sentence structure told me that he thought that I was somehow under the direction of Jewelle; that all he had to do was mention that she had asked for something and I would make that something happen. I turned away from him and called, "LaMarque!" "Yes, Mr. Rawlins?" The lanky twenty-­two-­year-­old loped from the truck to my side. "Where's your father?" "He had to go back east on business." Business for Raymond, more commonly known as Mouse, was high-­end heists with the strong possibility of brutality and bloodshed. "So he sent you to take his place?" I asked. I could feel Percy Bidwell starring daggers at my back. "Mama did. When you called to ask for Dad to help, she send me." "How long you been back from Texas?" "Nine days." "You outta all that trouble now?" "I ain't in no gang no more," he said, looking down a little sheepishly. EttaMae, LaMarque's mother and Raymond's wife, had sent the young man down to Texas to work on her brother's farm for a while. She did that to save the lives of the gang members who had tried to claim him as one of their own. Raymond would have killed them all if she hadn't interfered. A car pulled up to the curb just then. It was a dark Ford with four male passengers. Most cars in Southern California transported a solitary driver, a couple, a double date, or a family. Four men in a car most likely spelled trouble if there wasn't a construction site somewhere in the vicinity. "Well," I said to LaMarque while watching the men confer, "you get back to work and I'll give you twenty dollars to go home with." "Yes, sir," he said. Etta had taught the boy his manners. LaMarque ducked his head and ran back to the truck. "Mr. Rawlins," Percy Bidwell said. "Yeah, Percy?" I was watching the men as they prepared to disembark. "About Mr. Middleton." "What is it you want with Jason?" "That's private," the young man said. "Then you better just call him up yourself and leave me out of it." "I don't know him." "And I don't know you." "Jewelle told me to tell you to call him." "You don't tell me what to do, son, and neither does Jewelle." The four men were out of the car by then. They were all white men, tall, and burly. Three of them wore off-­the-­rack suits of various dark hues. The eldest, maybe fifty years of age, was dressed in a dark-­colored, tailored ensemble that was possibly even silk. The leader began the stroll up the slight incline of my lawn. "Easy," Jackson warned from an upstairs window. "I see 'em, Blue." "Is it all right?" "I hope so." "Mr. Rawlins," Percy was saying, trying once again to impress his will upon me. "Either get back to work or go home, Percy," I said. "I got other things on my mind right now." Excerpted from Rose Gold by Walter Mosley All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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