To Be or Not to Be Easy Rawlins or Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander

This week's 7 Criminal Minds question: What black character would you want to be for a day? 

by Paul D. Marks

Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins

As a sort of Part II to my last 7 Criminal Minds post (Easy Does It), in which we were asked to talk about “a source of inspiration you’ve derived from a black American author,” and where I talked about Walter Mosley and his characters Easy Rawlins and his psychopathic friend Mouse, in response to this week’s question, I would have to say that I’d want to be either Mouse or Easy for a day.

Part of me would rather be Mouse. He doesn’t care who he fucks up or what he does. But much as I like Mouse and his quick-draw instant retribution and justice, part of me would rather be Easy for a day…because it would be easier since, for the most part, he lives a normal middle class life.

Mouse is probably always looking over his shoulder, paranoid, waiting for someone to pop him. And while this happens to Easy sometimes and he gets into that frame of mind I think it’s less so for him and he lives a more normal life. He’s a property owner, he has kids and a house. He has friends. I’m not sure Mouse has many true friends. Some yes. But with a guy like Mouse are they friends or friends out of fear? Do they really respect him or do they just fear him? I think, on the other hand, Easy is actually respected and has friends who like him for himself.

Don Cheadle as Mouse

Yet, on the other hand, Mouse knows the streets. It would be hard to sneak up on him or get something by on him. Mouse is the guy you want backing you up and Easy goes to him when he needs fearless muscle.

Mouse

Mouse is (mostly) loyal and a good friend, but that doesn’t mean an insult, perceived or otherwise, won’t set him off to the point of almost killing you, or even going all the way in that regard.

Walter Mosley

Mosley says of Mouse at Crime Fiction Lover ( https://crimefictionlover.com/2013/06/interview-walter-mosley/ ) “I always describe Mouse as small with rodent features—a light coloured [sic], light eyed black man who would kill you without a moment’s hesitation. The contradiction of his appearance and potential is what makes him so scary.”

Don Cheadle as Mouse (center)

Easy was born in 1920. And I’ve often said, when asked what other time I’d like to be born in, that I’d want to be born in 1920, then I’d be twenty in 1940. Do my bit in World War II, hopefully survive, and come out into the mid and late forties noir world. Okay, I know it wasn’t so great on a lot of levels, but there is that swing music, those noir movies, and those hats and trenchcoats.

And who wouldn’t want to be played by Denzel Washington in the movies? Who wouldn’t want to be the good guy like Easy, who saves the day?

All that said, fuck it, I’d rather be Mouse.

Raymond 'Mouse' Alexander

~.~.~

And now for a little BSP:  I’m running a free promotion for people who subscribe to my newsletter. You can get a FREE e-copy of my novel Vortex. Just subscribe. And if you’re already a subscriber and want the novel contact me via my website or e-mail and I’ll send you the link for the download.

I'm also excited to announce that I've got a new book coming out in 2020: The Blues Don't Care. It's a little different for me. It's set in 1940s Los Angeles jazz scene during World War II. I hope you'll keep checking in for more news on this exciting new release.

***

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Easy Does It

Discuss a source of inspiration you’ve derived from a black American author. How has their work affected yours?

by Paul D. Marks

Many things and many people inspire me one way or another. But as a mystery/crime writer, I really enjoy Walter Mosley and his character Easy Rawlins. And as much as I like Easy, I might even like his sidekick Mouse more.

Pretty much anyone who knows me knows I have a thing for L.A., past and present. LA history. LA culture. And novels and movies set in the City of the Angels. Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress (1990), the first Easy Rawlins novel, hits all those bullet points and I was blown away when I first read it when it came out. And, much as I Iike Easy, I really like his psychopath friend, Mouse. Not someone you want to get on the wrong side of but certainly someone you’d want to have your back when the you-know-what hits the fan.

I like how Mosley weaves in the history of the times he’s writing in. He has the ability to drop you into the time period so you really get a feel for what it was like to live in that time and society. His keen observations on society and race are peppered throughout his stories. I also like that he focuses on the social issues of the times, while still keeping the fast pace and intrigue of a hard-boiled crime novel.

Here in the opening lines of Devil in a Blue Dress you have a great example of voice. We get a taste of the narrator’s (Easy Rawlins’) personality and we want to know more about him. Yes, we’re intrigued by the white man who walks into the room, but the real grabber is Easy’s reaction and the little tidbit of his history that we learn about. His character draws us in:

I was surprised to see a white man walk into Joppy's bar. It's not just that he was white but he wore an off-white linen suit and shirt with a Panama straw hat and bone shoes over flashing white silk socks. His skin was smooth and pale with just a few freckles. One lick of strawberry-blond hair escaped the band of his hat. He stopped in the doorway, filling it with his large frame, and surveyed the room with pale eyes.

I had spent five years with white men, and women, from Africa to Italy, through Paris, and into the Fatherland itself. I ate with them and slept with them, and I killed enough blue-eyed young men to know that they were just as afraid to die as I was.

In White Butterfly, set in 1956 Los Angeles, Mosley and Easy deal with a series of murders of black women that go unsolved until a white woman is murdered and then the LAPD comes to Easy for help. Mosley comments on a well-meaning white librarian and provides us with insight into the complex relationships and racial tensions of that time:

…I was unhappy because even though Stella was nice, she was still a white woman. A white woman from a place where there were only white Christians. To her Shakespeare was a god. I didn’t mind that, but what did she know about the folk tales and riddles and stories colored folks had been telling for centuries? What did she know about the language we spoke? I always heard her correcting children’s speech. “Not ‘I is,’ she’d say. “It’s ‘I am.’” And, of course, she was right. It’s just that little colored children listening to that proper white woman would never hear their own cadence in her words. They’d come to believe that they would have to abandon their own language and stories to become a part of her educated world. They would have to forfeit Waller for Mozart and Remus for Puck. They would enter a world where only white people spoke. And no matter how articulate Dickens and Voltaire were, those children wouldn’t have their own examples in the house of learning—the library.

In my writing, I write all kinds of characters, including, black men and women. Howard Hamm in Ghosts of Bunker Hill is a black P.I. There are several black characters in the Duke Rogers series (White Heat and Broken Windows), and also in my upcoming novel The Blues Don’t Care, set on the L.A. homefront during World War II. And you could say that at least in part they were inspired by Walter Mosley, Easy Rawlins and Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander.

~.~.~

And now for a little BSP:  I’m running a free promotion for people who subscribe to my newsletter. You can get a FREE e-copy of my novel Vortex. Just subscribe. And if you’re already a subscriber and want the novel contact me via my website or e-mail and I’ll send you the link for the download.

I'm also excited to announce that I've got a new book coming out in 2020: The Blues Don't Care. It's a little different for me. It's set in 1940s Los Angeles jazz scene during World War II. I hope you'll keep checking in for more news on this exciting new release.

***

Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website  www.PaulDMarks.com

Click here to: Subscribe to my Newsletter