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saroz162's review against another edition
4.0
Walter Mosley's greatest skill continues to be his observations of humanity: how they speak, what they look like, how they interact. The Easy Rawlins books are full of interactions where characters circle each other, size each other up, and what they don't say is just as important as what they do. (In general, Mosley's use of language is very powerful without ever seeming anything but conversational - he has a gift in that arena.) There's a sort of easy (forgive me) flow to the books that makes them very, very readable, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown is no exception. However, they do tend to blend into each other a bit, and the "mysteries" are never the most interesting part. The solutions are sometimes completely anti-climactic, in fact.
That doesn't quite happen with Brawly Brown. It's one of the more memorable ones, I think because the plot foregrounds the socio-political aspect - again, something Mosley depicts really well, but usually without quite so big a scope. Here, the generational divide between Easy and the young, more politically motivated Black people he has to investigate drives a lot of the tension, and anyone with a mild sense of mid-century history can kind of see where this is heading. That sense of history-in-the-making benefits the book, because once again Mosley introduces slightly too many characters to keep in your head (albeit one or two, like Sam Houston, being standouts). It's almost better to let it wash over you and notice the almost relentless march toward a famous tipping point instead.
On a sidenote, it's also pleasant to see Easy Rawlins, in middle age, having curbed his slightly less savory personal aspects without sacrificing his hard-boiled weariness. It would be easier for me to put this book in the hands of a new reader than the first two or three in the series, where Easy is, himself, a somewhat more seedy individual. I don't know about the continued reliance on memories of Mouse, though. I hope Mosley is going somewhere with that - there are hints that he is - because he can't keep the trick he employs in this book up for very long before it will become stale.
That doesn't quite happen with Brawly Brown. It's one of the more memorable ones, I think because the plot foregrounds the socio-political aspect - again, something Mosley depicts really well, but usually without quite so big a scope. Here, the generational divide between Easy and the young, more politically motivated Black people he has to investigate drives a lot of the tension, and anyone with a mild sense of mid-century history can kind of see where this is heading. That sense of history-in-the-making benefits the book, because once again Mosley introduces slightly too many characters to keep in your head (albeit one or two, like Sam Houston, being standouts). It's almost better to let it wash over you and notice the almost relentless march toward a famous tipping point instead.
On a sidenote, it's also pleasant to see Easy Rawlins, in middle age, having curbed his slightly less savory personal aspects without sacrificing his hard-boiled weariness. It would be easier for me to put this book in the hands of a new reader than the first two or three in the series, where Easy is, himself, a somewhat more seedy individual. I don't know about the continued reliance on memories of Mouse, though. I hope Mosley is going somewhere with that - there are hints that he is - because he can't keep the trick he employs in this book up for very long before it will become stale.
lgpiper's review against another edition
4.0
I read Walter Moseley to help me better understand issues related to race. His prime character, Easy Rawlins, has lots to say about race, and how he must go about doing things to avoid “race issues”, especially when it comes to dealing with the cops.
I first came upon Easy Rawlins quite a number of years ago on vacation. So, I’ve continued to read him on vacation, when I have more time to concentrate, ruminate, and finish a book. This latter issue is important to me because I was told back in the day that I read at only half the speed required for success in college. Despite that handicap, I did manage to get me some degrees over the years.
Anyway, I got started in the middle of the series, and worked my way to what was, a few years ago, the end. So, a year or two ago, I decided to begin at the beginning and work until I found the first one I’d read. Easy begins his adventures in the 1950s, just after World War II. In this book, we’re in 1964, when civil rights issues are coming to a head.
Easy, has a checkered past, but is trying to go straight, so to speak, so as to be a good father to his two children, Jesus or Juice (17 or so), and Feather (7 or 8). So, he’s working as the head janitor at the Sojourner Truth Junior High School in Los Angeles. But sometimes, his old past comes back to him. He used to “do favors” for people. Generally the favors involve extracting them from something sketchy.
An old friend, John, who used to be a bar tender, wants some help. It seems that John’s wife, Alva, has a son about whom she is worried. Her son, Brawley Brown, has disappeared and also appears to have become involved with people who are bound to get him into serious trouble. So, could Easy find Brawley and send him back to Mama?
On the surface, Brawley has become involved with a sort of civil rights group (probably a Black Panther stand in). Superficially, they want to set up better schools for children and see they have safer environments. But there are worries that some of the folks in the group are also interested in some kinds of violent interventions, and perhaps also some sketchier things.
So, anyway, Easy eventually works things out, fingers some of the sketchier folks and gets Brawley returned to his mother. Something like that.
Oh yeah, a recurring theme through the book, something on which Easy broods a lot, is that he thinks his friend, Raymond Alexander, a.k.a. Mouse, is dead. No one knows for sure. Mouse was in intensive care, then was snatched away from the ICU by his girlfriend (spouse?), Ettamae. No one has ever seen Mouse's body, and Ettamae seems also to have disappeared. Anyway, Easy is bothered by this, in part because he is responsible for the injury that got Mouse into the ICU, and broods incessantly about this through out this book. In some ways, it's his channeling Mouse that helps him solve the Brawley Brown problem.
I first came upon Easy Rawlins quite a number of years ago on vacation. So, I’ve continued to read him on vacation, when I have more time to concentrate, ruminate, and finish a book. This latter issue is important to me because I was told back in the day that I read at only half the speed required for success in college. Despite that handicap, I did manage to get me some degrees over the years.
Anyway, I got started in the middle of the series, and worked my way to what was, a few years ago, the end. So, a year or two ago, I decided to begin at the beginning and work until I found the first one I’d read. Easy begins his adventures in the 1950s, just after World War II. In this book, we’re in 1964, when civil rights issues are coming to a head.
Easy, has a checkered past, but is trying to go straight, so to speak, so as to be a good father to his two children, Jesus or Juice (17 or so), and Feather (7 or 8). So, he’s working as the head janitor at the Sojourner Truth Junior High School in Los Angeles. But sometimes, his old past comes back to him. He used to “do favors” for people. Generally the favors involve extracting them from something sketchy.
An old friend, John, who used to be a bar tender, wants some help. It seems that John’s wife, Alva, has a son about whom she is worried. Her son, Brawley Brown, has disappeared and also appears to have become involved with people who are bound to get him into serious trouble. So, could Easy find Brawley and send him back to Mama?
On the surface, Brawley has become involved with a sort of civil rights group (probably a Black Panther stand in). Superficially, they want to set up better schools for children and see they have safer environments. But there are worries that some of the folks in the group are also interested in some kinds of violent interventions, and perhaps also some sketchier things.
So, anyway, Easy eventually works things out, fingers some of the sketchier folks and gets Brawley returned to his mother. Something like that.
Oh yeah, a recurring theme through the book, something on which Easy broods a lot, is that he thinks his friend, Raymond Alexander, a.k.a. Mouse, is dead. No one knows for sure. Mouse was in intensive care, then was snatched away from the ICU by his girlfriend (spouse?), Ettamae. No one has ever seen Mouse's body, and Ettamae seems also to have disappeared. Anyway, Easy is bothered by this, in part because he is responsible for the injury that got Mouse into the ICU, and broods incessantly about this through out this book. In some ways, it's his channeling Mouse that helps him solve the Brawley Brown problem.
mrswythe89's review against another edition
4.0
Walter Mosley, you write supah poetic heartbreaking stories and you are sharp and illuminating on race; why you gotta be so relatively gender-faily? I know you are writing noir and all, but still. I think it would help if your narrator -- in fact, every one of your narrators that I've encountered so far -- was not always judging every woman they meet in terms of how sexually attractive they are. Just give this a go, right -- maybe, when your narrators meet a female character or two, they could forget to think about having sex with them. I know it sounds unnatural but I think it might be cool!
nmgwishi's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
dxlt's review against another edition
4.0
Easy Rawlins books are meant for reading and re-reading. I read these books as a younger woman and now I’m reading them against as a grown woman and they make me fall in love with the frailties of humans. This book has some great characters, like Sam Houston. Dare I say the narrators for the audiobooks: Michael Boatman, Mirron Willis and Dion Graham are amazing and bring these books to life. I’m completely and entirely amazed by Walter Mosley’s writing and I will read and re-read his books as long as I’m able. He brings so much to life from such an important history. The hero of this book is a school janitor, much like my favorite cousin, who’s also a school janitor, husband, family man, father and grandfather. So many people work in grueling jobs, who have passions, dreams, and hopes. Walter Mosley gives these people a voice. People like my father, grandfathers, great grandfathers, who toiled tirelessly to take care of their wives and children and make life better. Walter Mosley’s work is amazingly significant to the fabric of America. It will also make you fall in love with greater Los Angeles.
axmed's review
3.0
i was really disappointed in the way the revolutionaries that were modeled after Black Panthers were portrait in this novel. maybe Walter Mosley didn't know what we know now, when he wrote this book. but still. he could have at least made one of them an important character that would talk about the important work they or other chapters have done. but it seems pretty obvious that the writer didn't believe in their tactics, which is why he potraid them the way he did.
what bothers me throughout the series is how the main character, after all his experience with the police and being a Black man in the 50s and 60s in USA, that he still holds on to a lot of ideas of who is 'criminal' and that some ppl 'should be in jail' etc. which again i think says a lot about the writer.
will definitely continue the series, to see if there is an evolution in some sorts.
----
I realized that he wasn’t the type of child who could learn from white strangers who couldn’t hide their natural contempt for Mexicans. I had seen it at Sojourner Truth. Most children ignored the signs or connected with the two or three teachers who really did care about them. But Jesus wasn’t like that. He was connected to me, and it was my job to make sure that he learned what he needed to make it through life.
-
So men would put on their glad rags and women would don their costume jewelry and furs and go down to some local hangout where there was a jukebox and the pretense of luxury. After a few months of notoriety musicians would begin to frequent the place.
-
Because as fancy as the Brown Derby might have been, it wasn’t going to give you the kind of freedom that a black club offered. Black people know how to be free. People who had been denied for as many centuries as we had knew how to let their hair down and dance like there was no tomorrow.
what bothers me throughout the series is how the main character, after all his experience with the police and being a Black man in the 50s and 60s in USA, that he still holds on to a lot of ideas of who is 'criminal' and that some ppl 'should be in jail' etc. which again i think says a lot about the writer.
will definitely continue the series, to see if there is an evolution in some sorts.
----
I realized that he wasn’t the type of child who could learn from white strangers who couldn’t hide their natural contempt for Mexicans. I had seen it at Sojourner Truth. Most children ignored the signs or connected with the two or three teachers who really did care about them. But Jesus wasn’t like that. He was connected to me, and it was my job to make sure that he learned what he needed to make it through life.
-
So men would put on their glad rags and women would don their costume jewelry and furs and go down to some local hangout where there was a jukebox and the pretense of luxury. After a few months of notoriety musicians would begin to frequent the place.
-
Because as fancy as the Brown Derby might have been, it wasn’t going to give you the kind of freedom that a black club offered. Black people know how to be free. People who had been denied for as many centuries as we had knew how to let their hair down and dance like there was no tomorrow.
happeningalmond's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
mrsr_reads's review against another edition
mysterious
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0