Blood Grove by Walter Mosley

Published by Mulholland Books on February 2, 2021

Walter Mosley has a permanent position on my list of three favorite crime novelists. He secured that position with intelligent prose, credible plots, and complex characterizations. Add compassion and humanity, and you've got a storyteller who rises about the crowd. All of those elements combine in Mosley’s most recent Easy Rawlins novel.

Blood Grove takes place in 1969, a century after the Civil War ended “but the remnants could still be felt, still killed over on any street corner in the country.” Easy has earned the respect of a few members of the LAPD; many others would be happy to shoot him because of his skin color.

Easy is enjoying some alone time in his office when a man named Craig Killian walks in. Killian thinks he might have stabbed a man to death. He was in an orange grove where he saw a woman tied to a tree. He also saw a man holding a knife. Killian fought him and eventually realized that the knife was deep in the man’s chest. He lost consciousness after battling the man and, when he woke up, the man and woman were gone.

Killian endured some trauma in Vietnam and suffers from what would now be diagnosed as PTSD, but he doesn’t seem delusional. He wants to know what he might have done. He believes the woman called the man Alonzo. Since Alonzo was black, someone suggested to Killian that Easy might be in a good position to ask around and learn Alonzo’s fate.

Killian’s story is missing some pieces but Easy is a soft touch for damaged veterans. He takes the case, embarking on a twisting plot involving mistaken and multiple identities. His investigation leads him to a sex club, a bank heist, an embezzler, more murders, and multiple encounters with dangerous people. Along the way, Easy enlists the services of his own dangerous people, including series regular Raymond “Mouse” Alexander.

Other series regulars, including Jackson Blue and his wife Jewelle, make appearances, Jackson having made a career change that gives him the self-confidence he always lacked. Not lacking in self-confidence is Easy’s adopted daughter Feather, who meets her blood uncle for the first time, a hippy who must overcome Easy’s protective skepticism.

What is there to say about a new Easy Rawlins novel? Mosley has developed Easy and the secondary characters in such depth over the years that, at this point, only the plot details distinguish one novel from the next. And the plots are always good. Easy pounds the pavement, makes civilized inquiries, and calls in favors while waiting for the moment when a white cop decides to put him down. Through persistence and deduction, he moves closer to the truth a step at a time. Like every Easy Rawlins novel, Blood Grove is a treat for fans of intelligent crime fiction.

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