Easy Rawlins by Walter Mosley

Just as I was diving into James Ellroy's twisted version of Los Angeles in the post-war era, along came Walter Mosley's first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990). I grabbed it probably after hearing it reviewed on NPR. It was presented as a hardboiled LA crime story, but told from the perspective of someone who was never the protagonist in any of the classic stories; a black man. It's a good book and a terrific debut novel. It led me to read six more Easy Rawlins books as they came out as well as the first Socrates Fortlow book, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997). The latter is an absolutely fantastic book, disappointingly filmed by Michael Apted and starring Laurence Fishburne. 

Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins is a WWII veteran and aircraft factory worker when he falls into investigating the location of a white woman who frequents black bars. Worried about paying his mortgage after losing his job, Rawlins agrees. Along with the expected twists and dangers from a hardboiled mystery, Mosley delivers plenty about race and class in post-war America. It's not a perfect book - there's a bit too much deus ex machina via a certain character - but it's a damn good one. The movie, starring Denzel Washington as Easy and Don Cheadle as Mouse (which is the first time I noticed him and he blew away everyone else on the screen and in the theater), is solid, too. 

The first five books - Devil in a Blue Dress, A Red Death (1991), White Butterfly (1992), Black Betty (1994), and A Little Yellow Dog (1996) - are an absolutely terrific addition to the hardboiled canon. The speed of those five books' appearance is reflected in the headiness and urgency in Mosely's writing. Part of their goal is to open wide the genre and expand its purview beyond the same old white heroes. Nonetheless, they remain true to the tropes and forms. In the foreword to the 30th-anniversary edition of Devil, Mosely wrote:

Easy is not afraid of death. He cannot but follow his understanding of what is right and wrong. And he knows that the LAPD, the mayor and governor, the congress and president are not, in so many ways, reflective of his values. Every case he takes on is defined by his personal understanding of honesty and justice. In this way Easy is an inheritor of the mantle of the hardboiled private detective genre that started with Philip Marlowe and the Continental Op. He must make up his own mind as to what is legal and not legal, fair and balanced, in a world where corporate interests eclipse the individual nine times out of ten.

I read seven of the series before drifting away after Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002) as the stories became a little too familiar (I was also at the beginning of a push to read more new fantasy, so picking up some doorstoppers meant less time for crime stories).  A  major problem with any long series, though, is it's easy for the author to fall into a rut. It's got to be brutal to keep up the quality with a single set of characters who keep falling into extraordinary circumstances again, and again. I gave up on Joe Lansdale's Hap & Leonard series after Vanilla Ride (2009) and I'm not sure I'll go back to Michael Connelly's Bosch books anytime soon. The only similar things I've stuck it out with are James Lee Burke's Robicheaux books and John Connolly's Charlie Parker series, both largely because they're brilliant prose writers.

It's been ages since I reread Devil in a Blue Dress and it's definitely time for a revisit. The thing is, I stopped with book seven and now there are fourteen. If I start, I'm curious how much, if any, further, I'll get this time. The thing about ditching on a series is you never know what you're missing out on.  For all I know, the best Easy Rawlins book is one I never got to.

The Matter of Britain, Pirates, and Tough Guys

Statue of Boudica in London

I'm diving back into Henry Treece's Celtic tetralogy for Black Gate this coming week with Red Queen, White Queen. It's set during Boudica's bloody uprising against the Romans in 60 AD. Instead of the bloody queen, the book's perspective is from two soldiers, one Roman and the other a Briton. Where Artos and Medrawt in The Great Captains (reviewed at Black Gate) were building the great myths themselves, the protagonists here are only mortal moving through a legend-wreathed and spirit-haunted world.

Caractacus faces the Romans

The remaining books in the quartet are The Golden Strangers and The Dark Island. The first is set during the invasion of Britain by bronze using proto-Celtic tribes and their conquest of the stone age natives. The second is about Caractacus' war against the Romans.

I continue to be enthralled by the myths and history of early Britain. Even though my own roots are with the Saxon invaders, these stories have suffused the earth of the island itself and imprinted themselves on to all its inhabitants, including me through my ancestors. British resistance to foreign domination, be it Spain, France, or Germany, feels like it has its roots in the battles of Caractacus, Boudica, and Arthur. The seemingly endless struggle to bring a modicum of justice in times of chaos that lies with those stories as well.

I just finished off Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood books: Brethren of the Main, Captain Blood: His Odyssey, Captain Blood Returns, and The Fortunes of Captain Blood. I'll go into more detail on them later (with Howard Andrew Jones - the worst instigator of book buying around these days). For now, just let me say that they, are rollicking, swashbuckling adventures of the first order.

I've also gotten back into some good hardboiled books as well. I finally picked back up and polished of Bait Money, Max Allan Collin's first Nolan book. The reason I hadn't finished it was it wasn't grabbing me. Nolan's a little too nice and the caper wasn't shaping up as something too thrilling. I think part of the problem was that years ago a friend told me Nolan was nothing more than a Parker knockoff and I went in expecting something more brutal and cynical than it is.

While inspired by Richard Stark's master criminal, Collins had his on take on that archetype and explains it afterword. He wanted to look at that sort of a man in the later years of his career as well as exploring Collin's own baby boomer generation through the character of Jon. But when I first started reading the book I was expecting something different.

Well, I'm glad I returned to it. The end is explosive and a great setup for the sequel, Blood Money. And don't get me wrong, there's a fair amount of cynicism, it's just tempered compared to what you find in the Parker books.

I'm also in the middle of Fast One by Paul Cain. I'd never hear of Cain until seeing him included on Jones' (Chris Hocking's actually) list of hardboiled books the other week. In keeping with its title, this is one of the most fast-paced books I've ever read. Within a few pages it's like getting hit by a train, a bloody, booze-soaked train. Not done yet but great so far.

Based on that list I also bought The Mouse in the Mountain by Norbert Davis, The Complete Casebook of Cardigan: Vol. 1. by Frederick Nebel, Solomon's Vineyard by Jonathan Latimer, and The Name of the Game is Death by Dan Marlowe. All look like a lot of fun, but I have to admit I bought the Davis book because it's got a big dog in it.

There are really a lot of similarities between hardboiled fiction and swords & sorcery. Both are tougher, more cynical and feature heroes more concerned with staying alive or getting the money than fighting evil. Richard Stark is to Agatha Christie as Karl Edward Wagner is to Prof. Tolkien. This has been talked about before (can't find the links, but trust me, people have discussed this), and reading the Cain and Collins only reinforces this belief in me.

So that's what's going on off the pages of Black Gate for me bookwise. I'm not even sure what heroic fantasy book I'm going to pick up next. I think I need to find something truly odd and from off the beaten track (of course, lazy as I am, I probably won't make the effort and I'll just grab something I've read already).

Beginning of the Year - Looking Back, Peering Forward

Since everybody else out there's writing some sort of year-end wrap, I figure I might as well do one too. It's been a pretty exciting year as far as blogging goes and I'd like to take some time and evaluate what's gone on with my writing and promotion of all things heroic fantasy.

   Obviously, the biggest thing to happen was John O'Neil's invitation to join the ranks of Black Gate's bloggers. Last June, after I mentioned my this blog in a comment on BG, he asked if I'd like to do guest blog post. After a few e-mails it to try and narrow down what I'd write about, I debuted with "The Best New Sword & Sorcery of the Last Twelve Months." Despite the slightly misleading title, I was happy with the results and a lot of people read the article.

   This led directly to my present Tuesday slot at Black Gate. If you've been following along (and if you haven't, why not?), you know I've been mostly sticking to reviews. With these it's been a mix of books I've read, loved and need to get other people to read and books I've always meant to read but haven't. With the latter it's been an expectedly mixed bag: The Magic Goes Away was meh, Deepest, Darkest Eden was alright, and Three Against the Witch World and Jhereg were both blasts.

   Most of my other posts have been of the short S&S fiction being published in the 'zines. If I get one new person to read Swords and Sorcery Magazine, HFQ or BCS my time has been well spent. The only way S&S will survive is if fresh blood is pumped into its too-often sclerotic limbs by new writers. Encouraging them with reviews and criticism is a task I'm starting to relish.

   Finally, I've started working on the whole bit about why I'm doing what I'm doing. I started over at BG with "Why I'm Here - Part One" (and got into a debate about Star Trek with Howard Andrew Jones). With future installments I plan to look at the state of modern S&S, particularly compared to the old school stuff, the defensiveness I sometimes feel in the face of attacks on the old school stuff, and why I feel defensive. It's all a little vague and I'm pulling on articles and comments by a lot of different people on these very same things right now but I hope to turn out several posts on those subjects this coming year.

   The best thing to come out of the BG gig is the editing relationship between me and the luminous Mrs. V. I'm sort of lazy and very sloppy when it comes to editing myself. Heck, I advertise that in my profile. She, on the other hand, is meticulous, a mistress of grammar and pretty unfamiliar with the genre. I'm only writing 1,500 word articles but we go through them line by line. Her hyper attention to detail and grammar powers ensure my writing is correct. That third element of hers is the most valuable. Since she doesn't know the universe of references I'm using she confronts the assumptions I make of my audience's knowledge and forces me to make myself clearer. It's gotten a little testy at times, by which I mean I get defensive, but overall it's been dynamite. My BG posts are way better written, more coherent and more fun to read than what I do unaided on this site. I'm very happy with the way my writing's progressing and hope to see it continue on an upward curve. The posts I've delivered to BG, particularly on Night Winds, God Stalk and The Great Captains, are some of the best things I've written. 

   This year I'm looking to keep doing the same types of posts but make them better. I want to widen my purview to include some new books that I've bought in the last year to my usual roster of "vintage treasures." I also want to step up my short story reviews, by which I mean I want to start reading outside the same three (excellent) magazines I've been reading for the past two years. In his latest post, Keith West writes short stories are where "the lifeblood of genre is" and I'm down with that assessment. 

   The other thing I want to do this year is read more. I used to read sixty to seventy books a year but I've slacked off the last few years. Since I've been getting back up to speed I'm hoping to hit those numbers again. I want to catch up with Howard Andrew Jones' and James Enge's books and finish Ted Rypel's Gonji trilogy.  I want to read hardboiled books, especially some of Max Allan Collins' Quarry and Nolan books, some horror, particularly Laird Barron, and more of the neo-pulp being cranked out by folks like Ron Fortier. And I'm getting the Norton Critical Edition of The Pilgrim's Progress. Add to that list all the "literary" books I'd love to get to this year like Barnaby Rudge and it's overwhelming. Still, my hopes are high.

Crime Fiction

   So I lied. Instead of Megan Lindholm's Harpy's Flight, I read and reviewed Steven Brust's Jhereg, first in his long and ongoing Vlad Taltos series (it came in the mail and Lindholm's book didn't). If you haven't read it you should - it's a blast. On the surface it's a nice bit of hardboiled fantasy, complete with snazzy banter and witty rejoinders and set in the criminal demimonde. In reality it's more a Golden Age mystery, more concerned with the puzzle than any sort of existential dread or moody, tough-guy antics.

  The only genre fiction I read with any sort of regularity besides fantasy is crime. I grew up in a house surrounded by mystery books but I didn't start reading anything in the field until I picked up James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia because I was a little too interested in the actual murder. I liked it and figured since I'd always watched mystery tv-shows and movies I'd probably like other crime writing as well. I did and began a quick review most of the classic authors in the field - Christie, Sayers, Hammet, Chandler, etc. - before moving on to newer authors. This happened at a time when I was becoming bored with sci-fi and not encountering much fantasy that caught my eye so I was ready for something new.

   All of that's a long winded way of saying I really like mysteries and crime fiction and Steven Brust did  a great job creating a fantasy version of that. It's not as hardboiled as Glen Cook's Garrett series. In fact I was a little surprised when I started writing my review (way too late in the day and way too quickly - the crap my wife/editor is subjected to by my writing when I work like that is ridiculous) that I was thinking of the book as light and breezy. Maybe it's because when I think of heavy duty hardboiled crime stories it's from the likes of James Ellroy (and by the by, if that sort of stuff interests you AND you have a strong stomach, check out his Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy or the psychotically brilliant L.A. Quartet - Extra warning - Just because you liked the movie L.A. Confidential does not mean you'll like the book - all the really disturbing stuff was left out) or Ross MacDonald. There's something magnitudes beyond bleak in their books that Jhereg doesn't have. It's not a bad or good thing, just a thing, but Brust's book is definitely written with a lighter touch.

   By those standards, Jhereg's much more like the American Golden Age style crime fiction of Rex Stout and a thousand movies and tv shows. Like the UK's Agatha Christie or Margery Allingham, it's really about the sharp, tightly plotted events but everybody gets to make wisecracks, not just the working-class characters. 

   The problem with Golden Age mysteries is that their star characters usually exist in a state of stasis, never really changing and always exhibiting the same set of traits and tics. From what I've read about the later books they do become tougher and more character driven so I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. In an interview with Brust, I read he realized that if Vlad didn't grow and change there was really no point to continue the books. So between the Vlad Taltos and a half dozen or so related books, that's a nice stack of new things to read in the future.

   Prog and heavy music seemed inappropriate to the mostly urban swashbuckling of Jhereg. I decided on a mix of power pop (early Cheap Trick and the first Knack album - the latter's practically perfect despite its lurid smuttiness), and oddball post-punk rock (Camper van Beethoven and Cracker). It was a nice mix of stuff I haven't tuned into for awhile.