June Spotlight/Review #22: Charcoal Joe – Walter Mosley

I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Walter Mosley’s indelible detective Easy Rawlins is back, with a new detective agency and a new mystery to solve.

Picking up where his last adventures in Rose Gold left off in L.A. in the late 1960s, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins finds his life in transition. He’s ready—finally—to propose to his girlfri...

Walter Mosley’s indelible detective Easy Rawlins is back, with a new detective agency and a new mystery to solve.

Picking up where his last adventures in Rose Gold left off in L.A. in the late 1960s, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins finds his life in transition. He’s ready—finally—to propose to his girlfriend, Bonnie Shay, and start a life together. And he’s taken the money he got from the Rose Gold case and, together with two partners, Saul Lynx and Tinsford “Whisper” Natly, has started a new detective agency. But, inevitably, a case gets in the way: Easy’s friend Mouse introduces him to Rufus Tyler, a very old man everyone calls Charcoal Joe. Joe’s friend’s son, Seymour (young, bright, top of his class in physics at Stanford), has been arrested and charged with the murder of a white man from Redondo Beach. Joe tells Easy he will pay and pay well to see this young man exonerated, but seeing as how Seymour literally was found standing over the man’s dead body at his cabin home, and considering the racially charged motives seemingly behind the murder, that might prove to be a tall order.

Between his new company, a heart that should be broken but is not, a whole raft of new bad guys on his tail, and a bad odor that surrounds Charcoal Joe, Easy has his hands full, his horizons askew, and his life in shambles around his feet.

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Easy Rawlins is back, and we are so happy he is! Reading this story is like picking up where you left off with an old friend who you haven’t spoken to in some time. Mr. Mosley. Please make this story into a movie. Thank you in advance.

Easy and his two friends also detectives, Saul Lynx and Tinsford “Whisper” Natly have opened a detective agency. Easy is also about to ask Bonnie his perfect island woman to marry him as life is good, and that would be the perfect icing on the cake. But sadly she tells him something that leaves him devastated but there is work to do, and that keeps him going.

Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, who is his lifelong friend, has come to him about Rufus Tyler/Charcoal Joe who has a friend whose son was found in a house standing over a dead body, and Joe wants to talk about it and maybe have Easy look into the situation.

One of the cases Saul has is an insurance fraud case that had me laughing out loud when Easy gets involved.

Fearless Jones is also included to assist Easy with this case and of course, he is the friend we all need to have in our life, loyal and steady.

The story that builds from this situation alone is like a movie. It has love, heartache, murder, deceit, twists and turns only the way Mr. Mosley can write it to keep you turning the pages and create a piece of work that is visual in its depth. Every time I read something by Mr. Mosley, it is so enjoyable that I don’t want it to end, and that was the case yet again with this work. Like I stated in the beginning, this should be a movie, and when you read it, I am positive you will feel the same way.

I recommend this book and that you order it in advance as I’m sure it’s going to sell out. We love Easy Rawlins. Buy this book!

Reviewed by: Linda C

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