SOURCE: "Down and Out in the City of Angels," in Newsweek, Vol. CXVI, No. 2, July 9, 1990, p. 65.

In the following review, Jones finds that Mosley compensates for occasionally stiff prose and an overly complicated plot with his keen eye for detail, his "lowdown humor," and his development of the character of Easy Rawlins.

The notion of a fictional black detective in '40s Los Angeles sounds gimmicky, but on the first page of his first novel [Devil in a Blue Dress], Walter Mosley proves he has the talent to make this idea work. Audaciously, he steals the opening of Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely—where white detective Philip Marlowe visits a black bar—rewrites it from the point of view of a black customer, and turns a familiar world inside out.

Mosley has a lot of fun upending our preconceptions. His hero, Ezekial (Easy) Rawlins, doesn't set out to...