SOURCE: An interview in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 241, No. 21, May 23, 1994, pp. 67-8.

In the following interview, Mosley and McCullough discuss the character Easy Rawlins and the author's development from his first novel through his expansion into writing outside the Rawlins series.

"I'd like to be remembered in the canon of genre writers in this field," says crime novelist Walter Mosley. "I'd like my name to be mentioned with Raymond Chandler, Hammett, Ross McDonald, people like that."

"If people mention my race, I wouldn't be unhappy," continues Mosley, author of four murder mysteries based on the character of black detective Easy Rawlins, his reluctant but always gallant sleuth. "I'd like to think that I'm breaking new ground, not doing something completely new like Hemingway or someone like that, but doing something different in an interesting new way. I'm using a wide range of black characters and trying to reflect life...