SOURCE: "Walter Mosley: Writing about Easy," in Essence, Vol. 21, No. 9, January, 1991, p. 32.

In the following review, Washington discusses Mosley's characters in Devil in a Blue Dress and concludes, "Together Mosley's people make an old-fashioned page turner."

When Walter Mosley, author of Devil in a Blue Dress, was growing up in the Watts section of Los Angeles, he didn't have to depend on radio, television or the silver screen for thrilling tales of love and anger, crime, passion and revenge. Right in the family's own living room, Mosley's father and other relatives and friends from New Iberia. Louisiana, and parts of Georgia and Texas regaled the future writer with "crazy stories from their own young-manhood about partying and drinking and enjoying life."

Mosley, 39, set his first novel in Los Angeles, even though he has lived in New York since 1982, because, he explains, "my psychological base is there." The colorful...