Little Scarlet

Walter Mosley’s mystery thriller Little Scarlet, the ninth book in the Easy Rawlins series, follows Easy Rawlins as he solves a mystery during one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of America – the 1965 Los Angeles Race Riots. The police recruit Rawlins to solve a murder investigation. A woman known as Little Scarlet was found dead after a man was pulled from his vehicle and disappeared into her apartment building. The police assume the man is the primary suspect, but they can't find him anywhere. Rawlins is asked to investigate within the neighborhoods in LA where the police are afraid to go, terrified that their presence in certain areas will start another round of uncontrollable riots.

As the ninth book in the series, Mosley is working on a framework of the detective’s life that will not be clear immediately to readers who haven't read from the beginning. The Easy Rawlins series began with the book Devil in a Blue Dress, set in 1948, in the aftermath of World War II. Easy Rawlins is a twenty-eight-year-old black man in a white man's world, making what the thinks is a straightforward decision to take cash from a white man in exchange for tracking down his mistress. However, as in subsequent books, Easy finds himself in a morally ambiguous world. Rather than achieving a clear and unquestionable justice, Easy finds himself settling for the best he can muster.

Fast-forward to Little Scarlet, and Easy is a forty-five-year-old seasoned private investigator, particularly for the Black community. Easy is known by the police, even if he isn't usually embraced by them. Despite not having a license, Easy has gained some success for himself. He now owns property, a fact that he hides from many of his acquaintances that have yet to move up in the world. He is living with Bonnie Shay, a stewardess he might just love enough to marry. Easy also has two adopted children, Jesus, a teenager and a daughter, Feather, whom he has cared for since she was an infant.



Rawlins now has an office with an answering machine in South Central L.A., so he is right in the thick of the Motts Riots when they break out after decades, if not centuries of police brutality against non-whites. Rawlins can't argue with his fellows for rioting after the events he has witnessed, but he does his best to stay out of it, only harboring friends and local shopkeepers from his block. During the riots, however, Rawlins gets a knock on his office door. To his surprise, Melvin Suggs, a white detective from LAPD, is asking for his help.

Suggs tells Rawlins that a crime has been committed that the LAPD doesn't feel confident they can solve, given the violence that has broken out throughout the city, much of which is targeted at local police. A woman named Nola Payne has been found murdered in her apartment, and the police need help to find a suspect. Witnesses reported a man whom Nola pulled out of his car and harbored in her apartment during the thick of the riots. Afterward, Nola was found dead and the man had disappeared. The police obviously suspect the man of killing Nola, but they can’t go into many of the neighborhoods where they suspect he might be hiding.

Easy Rawlins finds the man after navigating the neighborhoods of South Central LA, despite the fact that many of the area residents are frightened to speak given the events they just experienced. Nevertheless, the man, of course, is only the beginning of a much larger, and more complicated mystery.



American novelist Walter Mosley was born in Los Angeles in 1952. He is best known for his crime novels – particularly for the Easy Rawlins series, which has fourteen books as of 2016. He also wrote the Fearless Jones and Leonid McGill mystery series, a handful of standalone science fiction and erotica novels, a few works of literary fiction, and plays. The first book in the Easy Rawlins series, Devil in a Blue Dress, was optioned for film in 1995. Mosley has also written a number of works of criticism and scholarship about African American history and culture, and a few books on writing. He lives in New York with his wife, Joy Kellman.