25,000 first printing $25,000 ad/promo movie rights to Reuben Cannon Mysterious Book Club and QPB selections.

But the first-person narrative, which hurtles along with improbable transitions and sketchy psychological portraits, leaves the reader winded rather than exhilarated at the book's predictable conclusion. In his debut outing, Devil In A Blue Dress, Rawlins arrives fully formed. Since his introduction in 1990, Easy Rawlins has been the star of more than a dozen novels by MWA grandmaster Walter Mosley. The language is hard-boiled (``Somewhere between the foo young and the check I decided to cut my losses'') and the portrait of black city life gritty and real. Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley is the 1st book in the famed Easy Rawlins series. With bodies piling up, there is no turning back for Easy, as he is dogged by brutish white cops and a few ``brothers'' none too friendly. Easy Rawlins is a war veteran just fired from his job. Easy becomes entangled in a chain of events that takes him to bar after bar to meet a range of characters, most of whom are seeking their own advantages in the pursuit of Daphne. Heat when she disappears with a trunkload of somebody elses cash. But a white businessman, Dewitt Albright, engages Easy to locate a beautiful French woman named Daphne Monet who has a ``predilection for the company of negroes.'' She also has $30,000 of someone else's money. He knows racism firsthand and seeing too many white men in one day unnerves him. Easy hails originally from the tough Fifth Ward in Houston he served his country, landing on the Normandy Beach. in 1948, introduces Ezekiel ``Easy'' Rawlins, a recently laid-off mechanic who is young, black and-but for the need to meet the mortgage on his new house-a most reluctant sleuth.

Devil in a blue dress book review