MOSLEY, WALTER

born 1952, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S. Mosley, 1996 African-American author of mystery stories noted for their realistic portrayals of segregated inner-city life. Mosley attended Goddard College and Johnson State College, and he became a computer programmer before publishing his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990; film, 1995). Set in 1948, the novel introduces Ezekiel Easy Rawlins, an unwilling amateur detective from the Watts section of Los Angeles. It presents period issues of race relations and mores as the unemployed Rawlins is hired to find a white woman who frequents jazz clubs in black districts. In all of his novels Mosley used period detail and slang to create authentic settings and characters, especially the earnest, complex Rawlins, who continually is faced with personal, social, and moral dilemmas. In A Red Death (1991), set during the McCarthy era, Rawlins is blackmailed by the FBI into spying on a labour union organizer. In White Butterfly (1992) the police call on Rawlins to help investigate the vicious murders of four young womenthree black and one white. Other novels featuring Rawlins include Black Betty (1994) and A Little Yellow Dog (1996). For the publication of Gone Fishin' (1997), a prequel to Devil in a Blue Dress, Mosley chose a small independent black publisher, Black Classic Press, over his longtime publisher W.W. Norton. RL's Dream (1995), which does not feature Rawlins, is the story of a dying former blues guitarist who is befriended by a young woman.