Investigator Rawlins is hard at work again in Walter Mosley's latest entry

Two simple words, confounding to some, but a bulletin of welcome news to thousands of fans who have waited six years for the return of Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, the resourceful black quasi-detective who rights wrongs and survives rough scrapes, many of his own making, in the semi-mean streets of Los Angeles in the years after World War II.


	Walter Mosley is committed to his roots. "I'm trying to create a literature that everybody reads, but that, on the other hand, black men can enjoy," he says. Gilbert W. Arias / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Click for larger photo

Among those pleased to greet Easy is his creator, writer Walter Mosley, who has risen to best-sellerdom and presidential popularity on the moxie of one of the most intriguing characters in American mystery fiction.

"I love writing about Easy Rawlins," Mosley said Friday in Seattle. "Easy has a voice that I find interesting, and it's not my voice. It's me-becoming-Easy and he says these things, has these thoughts and ideas that I don't have. By becoming him, I'm able to look at the world from a different point of view. Love does that for some people. Easy does that for me."

Easy's return is the centerpiece of Mosley's fine "Bad Boy Brawly Brown" (Little, Brown, 311 pages, $24.95) in which the usually resilient investigator finds himself on the emotional ropes after the apparent death of his longtime cohort, Raymond "Mouse" Alexander. Rawlins, not one to wallow in grief, soon gets busy instead, buries himself in the performance of a favor for a friend, tracking down her missing son who's on the fast track to trouble.

This submerges Rawlins in the swirling loyalties and rising black pride of Los Angeles in 1964. As always in these Rawlins novels, the setting has advanced several years from its predecessor and the times themselves are a character in the book, sharply sketched by the author. It isn't long before Rawlins finds himself ensnared in a police raid at the headquarters of the fledgling Urban Revolutionary Party, where a cadre of true believers are intent on helping the poor and not turning a gentle cheek, while assorted hangers-on have their own violent agendas.

"A police raid meant nothing to me," says Rawlins. "I'd been in whorehouses, speakeasies, barbershops and alley craps games when the police came down. Sometimes I got away and sometimes I lied about my name. There was nothing spectacular about being rousted for being black."

Rawlins, a World War II Army vet whose real work is as a maintenance supervisor at a school, soon sets off on an increasingly perilous journey trying to trail Brawly Brown and turn him around before it's too late. His pursuit propels the novel at breakneck pace, but the plot itself often turns convoluted. Like the classic mystery novels of L.A.'s noirmaster, Raymond Chandler, the getting there in "Brawly Brown" is more important than the final resolution.

Rawlins is an irresistible knight errant, tough when need be, always loyal, usually trustworthy, a man who stands up for a certain rough justice with a forthright matter-of-factness, a man whose family life is finally settling down into something approaching normalcy, yet he cannot resist the urge to pitch in when others are imperiled, no matter the odds.

Rawlins is a character in a hard-bitten mystery novel, but he represents far more to his 50-year-old creator. Mosley is intent on creating a working-class hero, a black role model with universal appeal.

"We in the community know that these black heroes exist," he stresses. "But very often, there has been this notion, especially among publishers, that black men don't read. That's like a sentence fragment, though. The real statement should be: Black men don't read 'The Scarlet Letter.' That is a great novel by a great American novelist, but it takes place in a time in New England when the slave trade was active and there was genocide being carried out against Native Americans, yet there is no black or Native American in the pages of 'The Scarlet Letter.'

"So it's a bald-faced lie to say black men don't read. Black men, at some point, simply stopped reading that kind of stuff. And black women, too. I'm trying to create a literature that everybody reads, but that, on the other hand, black men can enjoy. This work has deeply flawed characters, working-class people, although they may be enjoying some success, and when they do something wrong, you can feel the sweat. I know black women and black men can feel that."

Mosley is as intriguing as his hero. The product of a working-class, mixed-race marriage in Los Angeles -- the son of a black school custodian and a white school personnel clerk -- he turned to writing relatively late in life, after his previous career in computer programming, and has been on a winning streak ever since. He also was part of a mixed-race marriage for more than a decade; his former wife is Joy Kellman, a well-known dancer and choreographer in New York.

Mosley is hard-charging, a little arch, quite opinionated, a commanding, outsized presence in dapper threads and a jaunty fedora, a committed man in a hurry who concedes few doubts about his talents or his mission.

Mosley has every intention of not being remembered as just a prize-winning mystery writer. One of the reasons why Rawlins disappeared for six years is that Mosley is so darn busy at a dizzying multitude of projects. He has written science fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, even liner notes for a boxed set audio collection of comedian Richard Pryor, liner notes that earned him a 2002 Grammy Award, to the considerable delight of a someone who can't carry a tune or play an instrument.

Mosley is a writer who rambles all over the writing map, sometimes on what others, including critics, see as detours from his best talents. It would be easy to stick with Easy, but that is not Mosley's approach. He voices no doubts about his wide-ranging course: "If you're a writer, you should write all the time. And if you write even more, that should make you a better writer. I feel that my writing is getting better and I definitely do not believe that I am diluting my talent by what I'm doing. ... Some things, I do well. Some things, I fail at. But any artist should fail most of the time."

Mosley is also an artist who is committed to helping others who might hope to follow his path, especially fellow African Americans. He may have soared to popularity when then-President Bill Clinton admitted to being an Easy Rawlins fan in 1992, or when Denzel Washington starred as Easy Rawlins in "Devil in a Blue Dress" in 1995, but Mosley was not and is not about to forget his roots.

The New York-based writer created a publishing degree program aimed at urban youth at City University of New York, the only such program in the country. He has also been intent on spreading some of his success to small independent black publishers. The surprising prequel to the Easy Rawlins' series ("Gone Fishin'") was published by tiny Black Classic Press in Baltimore, Md., as part of Mosley's effort to invigorate worthy publishing efforts outside the white-dominated conglomerates in New York City.

Such actions have made Mosley one of the most outspoken critics of the publishing business as usual. He is not about to back off from that, even in the make-nice conversations that are an expected part of a promotional book tour funded by a major publisher. More writers of color are having their books published these days, which is encouraging to him, but he is also wary that it all could come tumbling down in a different climate.

"It is amazing how many black writers are being published today in a variety of genres, from science to romance; there are two best-selling novels by black writers, one by me and one by Stephen Carter," Mosley emphasizes. "But that all has to do with money. We're not building up the intellectual or economic infrastructure of the black community.

"Most black writers are being published today by mainstream publishers because they can make money doing that. But as soon as that money turns soft, all could stop being published. If we don't build up the infrastructure, if we don't make sure that blacks are being hired as editors and members of the sales force, if we don't give some of our books to black publishers, then we will have no infrastructure. And what's happening now is not going to last."

P-I book critic John Marshall can be reached at 206-448-8170 or johnmarshall@seattlepi.com.

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