mrjess_bhs's review against another edition
4.0
Always a good time with Easy Rawlins. Easy continues to outwit the white men and women who think they can take advantage of him or pull one over. I struggle with Mosley’s handling of Easy and Bonnie, but he does teach that characters take on a life of their own and may make decisions an author didn’t anticipate. After this many books, I feel like I know Easy better than most people in real life!
samiara's review against another edition
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.5
jakewritesbooks's review against another edition
4.0
Dreams have always featured heavily in Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series. But this one in particular had a lot of dream sequences and descriptions of dreams. It kind of wore on me after awhile; I felt like Mosley was trying to stuff extra scenes to raise his page count since the plot was so thin. I don’t know what it’s like dealing with publishers but note to writers: if you can get away with a good story in 190 or 220 pages, it’s cool. I don’t need padding just to get to 300.
But while I didn’t like repetitious usage of dreams, I liked the story itself because it felt so personal to the character. Easy is desperately trying to score money in order to fund an operation for Feather, his adopted daughter. You can feel his paternal desperation off the page. And because Mosley is not afraid to break hearts (this is, after all, a series about a black PI operating in apartheid post-WWII Los Angeles), I really didn’t know if he would pull it off in time to save Feather.
Again, like other Easy books, there are familiar beats: the shapely women who want to sleep with Easy, Mose appearing in and out when convenient. The series is showing its tread. But still, Mosley has created such a fascinating character with Easy and done so much with him that I’m willing to be graceful towards the faults of the book. It’s well-plotted; something Mosley has gotten incrementally better at with each novel, and it has a beating heart at the middle. I appreciated this and the series.
But while I didn’t like repetitious usage of dreams, I liked the story itself because it felt so personal to the character. Easy is desperately trying to score money in order to fund an operation for Feather, his adopted daughter. You can feel his paternal desperation off the page. And because Mosley is not afraid to break hearts (this is, after all, a series about a black PI operating in apartheid post-WWII Los Angeles), I really didn’t know if he would pull it off in time to save Feather.
Again, like other Easy books, there are familiar beats: the shapely women who want to sleep with Easy, Mose appearing in and out when convenient. The series is showing its tread. But still, Mosley has created such a fascinating character with Easy and done so much with him that I’m willing to be graceful towards the faults of the book. It’s well-plotted; something Mosley has gotten incrementally better at with each novel, and it has a beating heart at the middle. I appreciated this and the series.
alli_always_reads's review against another edition
2.0
The male ego was too much for me with this one. With the macho talking and all of the women throwing themselves at him, I just could not handle it.
readermonica's review against another edition
4.0
Mosley just keeps adding layers to Easy Rawlins as well a giving a good story in each of these installments. I just love this series.
You can find me at:
•(♥).•*Monlatable Book Reviews*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @MonlatReader
Instagram: @readermonica
Facebook: Monica Reeds
Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase
You can find me at:
•(♥).•*Monlatable Book Reviews*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @MonlatReader
Instagram: @readermonica
Facebook: Monica Reeds
Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase
readermonica's review
4.0
Mosley just keeps adding layers to Easy Rawlins as well a giving a good story in each of these installments. I just love this series.
You can find me at:
•(♥).•*Monlatable Book Reviews*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @MonlatReader
Instagram: @readermonica
Facebook: Monica Reeds
Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase
You can find me at:
•(♥).•*Monlatable Book Reviews*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @MonlatReader
Instagram: @readermonica
Facebook: Monica Reeds
Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase
nicolemillo's review
2.0
Hard-boiled detective with "seductive"/stereotypical women is not really my kind of thing, but I think a lot of people would really enjoy this. There were also a lot of sex scenes with pretty much every woman after our hero's dick which, again, I'm not too fussed about, but I liked the racial commentary and it was interesting to have this kind of genre/story told from a black perspective in the '60s (and all the obstacles that includes).
More...