A glance along the authors over there on the left will reveal writers who've exploited a variety of locations and protagonists of varying ethnicities and both genders. If there's any race, colour or creed unrepresented, it's probably because I haven't run across something that has tickled my interest. Afro-American author Walter Mosley is a prime example of that little problem. Easy Rawlins, as a name, rings a bell (but, then, so did Quasimodo) though I don't recall reading any of the titles listed below.
While Mosley is best known for his hard-boiled crime fiction featuring World War Two veteran and private investigator Easy Rawlins, he's the author of a respectable list of titles across several genres. On the basis of Known to Evil I've had no qualms about adding the other titles below to the Authors to watch for list, though we're probably looking to grab a Library book rather than a hard copy.
That, of course, may change as we increasingly move into the digital domain and available space on the shelves ceases to be an issue.
Read:
- Known to Evil (2010), where ex-crim but now semi good guy private investigator Leonid McGill is hired to contact a young woman and establish whether everything's OK with her. Fairly straightforward, you might have thought, but when he arrives at the address he's been given there's another girl dead, an apparent shooter stabbed, the police already on hand and no sign of the girl he's looking for.
The quest for Tara Lear is, predictably, the main plot line but there are a good half-dozen others, some more or less related, others that seem to have just popped up to complicate things and get in each other's way. Tara's gone to ground, his two sons have acquired issues with a Romanian pimp and there's a once-successful businessman who has had life turn on him and needs to be kept out of jail.
A good read that went along at a lively clip and definitely justifies further investigation.
Investigate availability of:
Easy Rawlins:
Devil in a Blue Dress (1990)
A Red Death (1991)
White Butterfly (1992)
Black Betty (1994)
A Little Yellow Dog (1996)
Gone Fishin' (1997)
Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002)
Six Easy Pieces (2003)
Little Scarlet (2004)
Cinnamon Kiss (2005)
Blonde Faith (2007)
Fearless Jones:
Fearless Jones (2001)
Fear Itself (2003)
Fear of the Dark (2006)
Leonid McGill:
The Long Fall (2009)
When the Thrill Is Gone (2011)
All I Did Was Shoot My Man (2012)
Science fiction:
Blue Light (1998)
Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World (2001)
The Wave (2005)
47 (2005)
The Gift of Fire / On the Head of a Pin (2012)