Monday, April 02, 2007
April Book: Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley
Mosley mines a new shaft of 1950s Los Angeles with a hero who combines the principles of Easy with the deadliness of Ray "Mouse" Alexander. The result is a violent, heroic and classic piece of noir fiction. Narrator Paris Minton is an appealing figure an easygoing black man for whom the written word is salvation and whose nameless used bookstore in Watts is paradise. Then the beautiful Elana Love enters his store and brings with her more trouble than Paris has ever seen enough trouble that Paris knows his only hope is his friend Fearless Jones. A former soldier, Jones is a riveting new creation. He's a man of both principle and action with an innate sense of justice and as his name makes clear, he's afraid of nothing. The novel rips along with a hunt for the girl and a race among competing factions to find a missing bond that's the key to a fortune. For the black characters it's a desperate struggle to stay alive in a white world where the deck is stacked. One sly reference tells the reader we're still in the same world and time inhabited by Easy Rawlins, and that Fearless and Mouse are equally "bad." But Fearless is also a knight-errant and hopefully destined for further adventures as fine as this one.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
3 comments :
Played a little ball up to the blacktop last
night, missed my old friend Consienceless Winn, who must have been on duty.
Stopped into that Silk City for a quiet one but some old guy with a flashlight
and a Karl Malden nose put his schnoz in the waitress's beckoning bosom and
things got interesting from there. Spent a couple hours in the local poke but
Officer S. snuck me out the back door and I was home before the missus knew I
was gone.
Jimmy Chiclets
Wednesday found me down to Liquors 44 over by the Super Stop & Shop where my old girlfriend worked before she had to move to Canada. I was picking up beer and chips for the Men's Book Group, a bunch of jocks and docs with nothing better to do now they past the midlife crisis. Used to be Smith girls and convertibles, now it's Red Sox and paperbacks. But it still good. So I've got my arms full of schnapps and snacks and the young lady at the counter comes around to give me a hand. "Going to a party, mister?" she asks, leaning a bit so I can see the tattoo above her butt cleavage that points to her butt cleavage. She's got that undefinable liquor store girl thing about her, a hint of cigarettes and a daddy complex. Makes me stiff as my knees these days. She points her little laser at a bag of Lays Potato chips, licks her upper lip a little and says, "betcha can't eat just one!" I play with the altoids next to the can for the Leukemia Society but she still ringing me up big time. She's got her hands on a sixer of Buds in the bottle and struggling with the paper bag. "These long necks are always tough to get in, wouldn't you say," she says, and I'm thinking 'bout inviting her for a weekend in Springfield or something when Conscienceless come strolling in like he own the place and say, "Come on, Worcester, zip it up and let's get out of this place, the Chinese guy bout to take the hill." Stuff like that just happen to me.
-Worcester
Wednesday found me down to Liquors 44 over by the Super Stop & Shop where my old girlfriend worked before she had to move to Canada. I was picking up beer and chips for the Men's Book Group, a bunch of jocks and docs with nothing better to do now they past the midlife crisis. Used to be Smith girls and convertibles, now it's Red Sox and paperbacks. But it still good. So I've got my arms full of schnapps and snacks and the young lady at the counter comes around to give me a hand. "Going to a party, mister?" she asks, leaning a bit so I can see the tattoo above her butt cleavage that points to her butt cleavage. She's got that undefinable liquor store girl thing about her, a hint of cigarettes and a daddy complex. Makes me stiff as my knees these days. She points her little laser at a bag of Lays Potato chips, licks her upper lip a little and says, "betcha can't eat just one!" I play with the altoids next to the can for the Leukemia Society but she still ringing me up big time. She's got her hands on a sixer of Buds in the bottle and struggling with the paper bag. "These long necks are always tough to get in, wouldn't you say," she says, and I'm thinking 'bout inviting her for a weekend in Springfield or something when Conscienceless come strolling in like he own the place and say, "Come on, Worcester, zip it up and let's get out of this place, the Chinese guy bout to take the hill." Stuff like that just happen to me.
Post a Comment