Book Review

Book Review: Rose Gold, An Easy Rawlins Mystery by Walter Mosley

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Our February book this month was an “Easy Rawlins” mystery.  We’ve read several of Walter Mosley’s works over the years and everyone generally looks forward to seeing what our man, Easy (Mosley’s main character) is up to.

Rose Gold was published in 2014. So years ago when we met Easy, it was the late 1940’s. Now Easy has matured and it’s the late 1960’s. Easy is a private investigator and his assignment is to find an heiress named Rosemary Goldsmith (Rose Gold), who may have been kidnapped.  The kidnapper may be an ex-boxer or possibly a revolutionary leader. There are just so many maybes we can handle as we read through the story. In Rose Gold however, one certainty is that Easy is hired by the Los Angeles Police department.

All of Easy’s novels take place primarily in LA, but we also follow him to many other towns and communities around southern California.  He moves smoothly around various ethnic neighborhoods making connections and taking in favors as he follows leads about Rose’s whereabouts.

While Rose is the focus of Easy’s assignment, the innocent young black boxer is the real victim as the police have orders to shoot him on sight.  But even as Easy travels about doing his job, he’s a sitting target for all sorts of police harassment.  (Nothing much has changed in the last 50 years).  Easy’s client is a high-level group of police officials but the cop on the street is none the wiser.  Thus, Easy must refer cops to call his contacts to verify his need to do whatever it is he’s doing.

Mosley handles the racial tension totally in context and makes readers, especially some of a certain generation relive in great detail the language, the clothing, and the changing social scene.  He has an amazing way of telling us about skin color, language and the way a dress fits.

Rose is a Patty Hearst-like character and just like with Patty we are left not quite sure about Rose.  How much of a victim is she?

Our book club members were concerned about the plethora of characters.  A few went back and re-read portions of chapters to keep them all straight.  We also missed Mouse.  Mouse is Easy’s best pal in crime and he really is our favorite in all the other thirteen Easy Rawlins mysteries.  Mouse is fast talking, slick, and doesn’t give a damn about anyone’s life.  But in Rose Gold he’s strangely out of town.  Easy summarizes and closes some of the open questions for us at the very end of the book in a phone conversation with Mouse.

None of the book club members remember this technique in any other novel and we decided we didn’t like it. At a recent book signing in Seattle, Mosely stated he sometimes doesn’t know how a book will turn out. We all agreed we would rather Mosely wrap up the loose ends as part of the novel narrative.

We strongly recommend “Rose Gold.” Our book club meeting was at The Raconteur Restaurant in Third Place books in the Seward Park neighborhood.  It’s the perfect place to have a meeting and discuss our latest read. Hopefully you found this review to be insightful and if so, let us know by leaving us a comment here on our website.

Book Review

Book Review: Born a Crime, Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

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Sunday was our regular book club meeting day, and on this Sunday our discussion leader, Claudia, was in top form.  She triedBorn A Crime her best and was generally successful in keeping our discussion on track after she introduced the book “Born a Crime” and gave an overview.

The memoir by Trevor Noah is a fun read that each book club member seemed to enjoy even though it was focused on apartheid-era South Africa. We’ve been reading some pretty heavy subjects lately and the nightly news is usually so depressing. 

Two of our members in the meeting have been to South Africa and shared their observations and experiences as we talked about Trevor’s recounts.  There were several of his stories that helped us collectively understand the impact of apartheid on daily life of a child and then a teenager.

Trevor was born to a black mother and a white (Swiss) father.  His mother is tough.  She’s tough minded and makes her own way in the world going against her family’s norms. She’s also tough on her son.  Many of his early childhood memories are about the church that his mother believed in and his challenges to it.

At the time Trevor is born it was a crime for whites and blacks to have intimate relationships.  We found it remarkable that Trevor and his mother were never “caught.”  If caught, Trevor explains one or both of his parents could have gone to prison.  Also remarkable was the fact that his mother made a deliberate choice to have a mixed race child. 

As a child, being mixed race meant Trevor could not publicly be acknowledged by his father.  It’s hard to understand how a child could be taught to walk on the opposite side of the street as his dad.  This circumstance also required that Trevor spent most of his early childhood inside.

He was inside until he went to visit with his mother’s family in the black community, Soweto.  Then, with his pale skin he was treated like a little king.  Still not allowed to go out and play much but always getting the best they had to offer.

Noah shares many funny stories about growing up and how his skin color played a part in how he was treated by blacks and whites. We spent most of our discussion time laughing about the hilarious and sometimes harrowing events.  Trevor was a bright child and skirted the law several times as a teen. He spent a lot of time hustling to make money.

Toward the end of the book we were all shocked by Trevor’s telling of his mother being shot by her black husband.  The telling leads you to believe she may not recover.  Miraculously she does, and all is well. Trevor goes on to become an international celebrity and finds his biological father who was absent during his adolescence. It’s heartwarming to learn that his father had followed his career and had the news clips to prove it.

“Born a Crime” is heartily endorsed by the BookClub Seattle.