"A good private-eye novel . . . is not really about violence; it's about the fallibility of people, about the grotesqueries of modern life, and not least it is about one man, the detective, who defines the moral order." This statement, from Washington...

Since the publication of Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990, African American novelist Walter Mosley's books have been known as "The Easy Rawlins Mysteries." Mosley changed the face of American detective fiction and became one of...

Mosley has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles; it is perhaps his most popular...

When the world first met Easy Rawlins, he was 28. It was post-World War II Los Angeles — a city full of opportunity and without a long history — not a bad place to be for a smart, confident black man. Fired from his job,...

Today is Friday, Jan. 12, the 12th day of 2007. There are 353 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On Jan. 12, 1945, during World War II, Soviet forces began a huge offensive against the Germans in Eastern Europe.On this date:In 1519, Holy Roman...

Today is Saturday, Jan. 12, the 12th day of 2008. There are 354 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On Jan. 12, 1948, the Supreme Court, in Sipuel v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma, ruled that states could not discriminate against law-school...

In the following essay, Crooks examines the crime fiction of Mosley and Chester Himes, applying ideas about the American frontier myth to each author's representations of race.

In the following essay, Smith discusses Blue Light in terms of the intersection of transcendental thought and the African American experience, arguing that Blue Light's lukewarm critical reception was a result of reviewers not recognizing the work as “a novel of ideas.”

In the following essay, Lock asserts that Mosley draws upon the literary genre of hard-boiled detective fiction to express issues particular to the contemporary urban African American experience.