First published in 1990, Walter Mosley’s dark tale of mid twentieth century Los Angeles has become a cult classic. It is the tale of Easy Rawlins, a WWII veteran who’s finding his way in a lawless Los Angeles, barely scraping by on his factory wage, he’s minding his own business one night when he’s offered the chance to track down the mysterious Daphne Monet, a girl everyone seems to be looking for and who everybody seems to want something different from. Naturally this seems straightforward at first, but gradually as the narrative progress Rawlins gets sucked further and further into the cracks of postwar Los Angeles that the turn of every page has you fearing from his life.

Guided by Mosley’s superb powers of description, you can really feel your way around the murky netherworld that Rawlins is operating in. You feel the heat rising from the rotten streets, you can taste the bad liquor and you feel the pain from every punch thrown. Well paced and full in intrigue, the key to the success of the book is Mosley’s ability to make you trust absolutely no-one, including Rawlins himself. With every twist and turn he makes you discount every guess you’ve made, doubt every judgement you’ve come to and question every fact you’ve taken for granted. He’s also compassionate with his treatment of the characters, none of whom are, on the face of it particularly likeable. There are no pantomime villains and no knights in shining armour, just struggling men and women with rent to pay, debts to settle and circumstances they’d rather not find themselves in.

You can see Mosley’s influence in hundreds of books that have been written since and, over time, he’s proved himself a wonderful craftsmen in carving out mystery after mystery. This is where it all started and it’s well worth celebrating, despite being published a full twenty years ago Devil In A Blue Dress has not aged at all. It remains a must read and, its creator remains a terrific novelist.

Reviewed by Tom Goodwyn

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