Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories (8) (Easy Rawlins Mystery) Paperback – September 1, 2003

Easy Rawlins leads a complicated and complex life as a black quasi-detective in 1964 Los Angeles. Orphaned at eight years old, befriended by Raymond Alexander, known as Mouse and who is one of the most cold-blooded killing machines ever born, Easy grew up in Houston's Fifth Ward and has trouble staying out of the mean streets where he became a man. He's fought to change his life of violence, against himself and against others who constantly drag him back into that world where death is quick and harsh, and respect only comes with a stack of greenbacks or at the end of a gun. In SIX EASY PIECES, Easy actually takes on seven cases filled with death and mayhem, the kind of life he's always known, while striving to hold his personal life together and making certain none of that violence spills over onto the family he's struggled so hard to carve out of the tapestry of tragedy that he has never been far from. "Smoke" begins with a phone call that tells him Mouse, the friend whose death he believes he caused and whom he has mourned for the past year, is still alive. Bonnie Shay, the woman he has come to love and to trust, also has to leave the family for her stewardess job for a prolonged junket in Europe, leaving Easy restless until an arsonist strikes at Sojourner Truth Junior High School. As head custodian, Easy has to deal with the reports and the clean up at the school, but as a man of the streets whose best friend's death has left permanent guilt in him and whose woman has left, Easy strides into the shadows of the city after the man who started the fire. Easy follows up the lead he got regarding Mouse and ends up looking for a repentant prostitute then her killer in the church she attended in "Crimson Stain." In "Silver Lining" Easy revisits some old friends who are being blackmailed by a kidnapping, bringing Easy into direct line of fire from an old enemy. Bonnie's loyalty to Easy comes into question during her return from Europe in "Lavender" when flowers arrive at Easy's home before his woman does. EttaMae Harris, Mouse's woman, calls in a favor from Easy while he's dealing with his own pain over Bonnie, asking him to help a young man that has fallen for a young woman hell-bent on death and destruction. Saul Lynx, a private detective Easy has worked with in the past, pulls Easy into a case to clear a man accused of murder in "Gator Green." Family again becomes the central issue in "Gray-Eyed Death" as more of Easy's past surfaces, mixing in an armored car robbery and a frame. In "Amber Gate," Easy goes looking for the murderer of a young prostitute to clear a friend of a friend, and makes a major turning point in his life.Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series has spawned seven novels to date. Six of those novels, DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, A RED DEATH, WHITE BUTTERFLY, BROWN BETTY, LITTLE YELLOW DOG, and BAD BOY BRAWLY BROWN are primarily straight mystery-suspense novels. GONE FISHIN' is an exploration of Easy's early days and the violence that gave birth to the man he started becoming. Mosley has also written two volumes of short stories about ex-con Socrates Fortlow, ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED, ALWAYS OUTGUNNED and WALKIN' THE DOG. The author also writes science fiction in FUTURELAND and BLUE LIGHT. FEARLESS JONES introduced another detective duo that so far has only shown up in one novel. RL'S DREAM was a straight novel about the last days of a bluesman. Mosley has also authored nonfiction that includes WORKIN' ON THE CHAIN GANG and BLACK GENIUS.Fans of Easy Rawlins will fall right into this collection of novellas because the resonance of Easy's life and the tapestry of his person history-including his failings as well as his successes-holds true. Long-time readers will get the feeling he or she is revisiting a well-known friend in the middle of several crisis points that those friends have seen coming. If this book is a reader's first exposure to Easy Rawlins and the violent world of pre-Civil Rights Los Angeles of 1964, the introduction to the man, his family, his views of life (and yes, there is more than one) and the violent and mean streets he walks down comes in simple gulps that never impede the action or the emotions. Easy Rawlins is a real person in these pages, full of hope, fear, love and hate. He holds the burning brand of self-knowledge and knowledge of the world, while at the same time being confused by twists and turns he can almost see coming, and being hurt by the unfairness of life that he knows is there but can never truly accept. Mosley's execution of the stories is flawless, pulling the readers into Easy's world and life, into his struggles with outsiders as well as himself. The dialogue is sharp and true, of the street, of years of growing and learning and accepting, of the stations in life that men and women of all colors sometimes get trapped in, and of the trade-off they make with hope and dreams just to find a means to survive.SIX EASY PIECES is an excellent volume of crime fiction, of period noir, and of a man who is still yet growing and changing, still building himself while at the same time being broken and battered. New readers who enjoy the strong male characters of Robert B. Parker and James Lee Burke will find another author and voice to love and respect in these pages, and old readers will be visiting with a true friend they can trust and enjoy.

I am a long time Walter MOSLEY fan...I very much enjoyed the "integration" of key Characters into the SIX EASY PIECES OFFERING...Blessings IN Christ Jesus...Lawrence A Felix Jr.

It's so easy to read this series. The characters are so vivid and real. I can hear and feel the story. There are occasions in books in which you must have a suspension of disbelief. Never with this book series. I very much look forward to what Easy and Mouse get up to next.

I'll be first to admit the stories have me hooked. People arguing about how late I've gotten to them but they're still intriguing.

I am taking a master class in mystery writing called the Easy Rawlins series. “Six Easy Pieces” is funny yet thoughtful. And Walter Mosley excited but doesn't go overboard. Sometimes authors hit you with twists that are just too farfetched to be believable or plots too grandiose to be enlightening. Not Easy Rawlins. Everything makes sense. Etta's lie made sense. What happens with Mouse makes sense. The story is never over the top because life, real life, is exciting enough.There is something about avocados in Easy Rawlins novels. Maybe it's their green color, a prominent color in the series: clothing, cars.I think the only thing I dislike about the novels is an awful lot of people seem to die around Easy. A wonder he hasn't been pegged as a serial killer yet.But overall, great stories. On to “Little Scarlett.”

Feeling due for a little pulp fiction, I picked up Mosely's _Six Easy Pieces_." It is quintessential summer reading - a collection of short stories (a great mid-afternoon distraction between yard work and a nap) with snappy dialogue, tidly resolved plots, and clearly outlined "good guys" and "bad guys." Set in Southern California in 1964, Easy Rawlins is a private detective cut from the same cloth as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe: a character with a shady past, but a strong moral compass nonetheless. The short stories stand alone, although there is a common thread that runs through them: the death of Rawlin's good friend (and earstwhile "heavy") "Mouse," Rawlin's struggle to maintain a relationship with his wife (a flight attendant), his committment to his adopted children, and the daily struggles of an African-American man in pre-civil rights America.The mysteries each have a unique tenor to them - each case presents a different glimpse into the character, his world, and his moral compass. I particularly liked "Gator Green" (dealing with the wrongful arrest due to a theft and the masterful way in which Rawlins deals with racial intolerance of the time) and Amber Gate, perhaps the most "Hammet-esque" of the stories, given its resolution. That said, Walter isn't Hammet or Chandler; while I'll certainly give him another go (his Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned was highly recommended to me), I think I'll give Easy Rawlins a rest.

I look forward to reading the six (or seven) of these longish short stories by Walter Mosley. I've read beginning parts of some of them included in some of Mosley's full-length novels that feature the black detective, Easy Rawlins. In one of these short stories, the much-mourned death of Mouse, Easy's loyal side-kick, is tossed to the winds with his re-appearance and his own narrative of hanging onto life. I felt quite joyful about that. Obviously, I've become very attached to Mosley's set of characters in his Easy Rawlins book series!

Walter Mosley is in my top two crime writers currently active... he has an apparently effortless style - no doubt the result of hours of revisions! His Easy Rawlins series is right up there with other 'tec greats such as Marlowe, Maigret and Rebus. After attempting to read a couple of really poor books, this came like a glass of ice cold water to a man in a desert.The stories in this book appear to have been published along with novels in USA editions... most of the stories deal with what happened to Mouse, Easy's friend, and Easy's quest to find out if he is really dead... they fill in an important gap for someone who has only read the novels (UK editions). Some have complained about the repetition that this entails, but in truth those paragraphs aren't a large part of the stories, which are stand-alone short stories with the Mouse-quest as a thread running through them. Sometimes, books like this are labelled 'only for the completist', but I think anyone would enjoy these stories. The collection appears to be out of print (my copy was second hand, all the way from a Texas library!) but deserves a reprint, IMHO.

I found "Six Easy Pieces" up to Walter Mosley's great standard. His protagonist, Easy Rawlins, doesn't take long to go from innocent easy going friend and head of a mixed family to someone operating deep in the LA underworld with courage and no regard for his own safety, trying to right the wrong-doing in the world. All done with a beautiful eye for the details that help you feel you are in LA in the 1960s. My problem is that having read a great number of the books I am now confused about which ones are left for me to enjoy, I fear there aren't any more left.PH.