Mystery Review: Black Betty is the fourth of the Easy Rawlins mysteries, which began set in the late '40s (Devil in a Blue Dress) and we're now up to 1961 (five years after the previous book, White Butterfly). Along with providing gritty crime thrillers, the series is incidentally a history of black life in America, or at least a black man's life in Los Angeles. Here we learn what life was like then, events concerning King and Kennedy, and even a memory of Huckleberry Finn. We also see the state of rage and mercy in this particular man. He's changed neighborhoods, relatives have left, his family being both a state of grace and a source of sorrow. Easy Rawlins is tough, but with exasperating flaws that will cut him down to size. Mosley continues the legacy of L.A. detectives (Rawlins is a detective, he just hasn't yet admitted it to himself) such as Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, and does it with a complexity and sensitivity they would've respected, and perhaps they could've even understood the anger. At the same time, the body count here is higher than is comfortable, but may well reflect the time and place, and certainly matches the unnatural greed to be found in America. Mosley writes about all that in Black Betty: "I realized that I'd always be surrounded by violence and insanity. I saw it everywhere ... even in me. That feeling of anger wrapped tight under my skin, in my hands." We see how the rich can control anything, how a wealthy family will do anything to stay wealthy, and how a web of greed can lead to a chain of deaths. Black Betty is another altogether proper installment in the series. [4★]
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