SOURCE: "The Blues Muse," in Chicago Tribune—Books, September 17, 1995, p. 5.

Taylor-Guthrie is an educator and editor of Conversations with Toni Morrison. In the following review, she asserts that in RL's Dream Mosley "has succeeded in making the reader understand the emotional and intellectual reality of the blues life."

Walter Mosley is known for his four highly successful mystery novels, the Easy Rawlins series that began with Devil in a Blue Dress. One reason for the success of those novels is their tone and Easy himself, whose present life in Los Angeles is always linked to his past in Texas, where survival was far from assured.

Easy is a hustler, a man trying to make a way in a land and world that would rather he break his back doing hard labor and then disappear into the dust when the break occurs. The African-American world of Easy's Los Angeles...