Little Scarlet

Easy is asked to investigate possible murder of black woman by white man during Watts riots, discovers black serial killer

I had begun reading Richard Wright's Native Son, and decided it was too depressing and that I needed a respite. Interesting to pick this book up. It also deals with the corrosive effects that racism has on both the black and white communities.

This book is set during the time of the LA riots in the summer of 1965 (I'd thought the riots were 1966, which, I guess, shows how well I remembered them). Anyway, the protagonist is an African American who doesn't trust the white community in the least. Someone, perhaps a white man, had murdered a black woman and the cops could care less. They didn't even want to admit there had been a murder, lest the riots continue. So Easy Rawlins works on the problem until he comes to a solution.

I had read another "Easy Rawlins" book once before, but hadn't remembered it to have quite so much material on the issues of racism. I had remembered it as showing life through the lens of an African American, but not as showing how corrosively white racism poisoned the lives of both blacks and whites. It's interesting that some half-century removed from the 1965 race riots, we, as a society, still use racism as a wedge to separate people for political, i.e. pecuniary, gain.

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Easy Rawlins goes looking for a serial killer in the middle of the 1965 Watts riot. black women are dying and nobody seems to care. he takes on a temporary partner, who is white, to solve the case. "He was a cop by trade and I was a criminal by color. But there we were." and he's thinking about the experience of blacks in a white world, the harsh reality of every chance encounter, identity and stereotypes shifting just a little but not enough at a moment when the ground is suddenly changing beneath their feet. in one of his best mysteries, Mosley makes a powerful clear statement about fear and understanding in two worlds set against each other. ( )

This one really resonated, in a "the more things change..." kinda way. ( )

This entry in the Easy Rawlins series is one of the best so far. It's August, 1965; Watts is erupting; a black woman who was known to have rescued a white man from a beating in the streets is found murdered and the unidentified white man is the prime suspect. The police can't afford to add THAT fuse to the powder keg, and white cops in the black neighborhoods are only likely to provoke further violence, so they ask Easy to investigate discreetly under a letter of authority from the police commissioner. He soon becomes convinced that the white man did not kill Little Scarlet, and that the actual murderer has been killing black women involved with white men for a long time. Encounters with a thoroughly decent detective who treats Easy with a collegial respect he's never experienced from any white man in authority before lends a tone of optimism to this tale of troubled times. ( )