Krishna
Easy Rawlins meets a white man in a black bar. The man seems to be a dangerous person, and his friend the bartender introduces them and says that the stranger has a ‘job for Easy’. He is Dewitte Albright and seems to be a person ‘who does whatever jobs are that need done’ and is recruiting Easy to help him. Despite serious misgivings, Easy (Ezekiel really) decides to take up the job to get money to pay for his mortgage.
He goes to meet Albright and is asked to find a lady called Daphne. He goes to a bar where Daphne was seen last. It is a black bar and hidden (illegal) and only who know them are let in. It was Easy’s old stomping ground and so they all know him. How convenient.
Easy meets an old buddy and his scheming girlfriend Corrina, who tries to seduce him before saying that Daphne is her friend and she does not like her being investigated.
When he is hauled into the police station and released, he learns that Corrina has been killed. Then Daphne herself calls him.
Boring, boring, boring. The story of how black folks fear police and are being totally uncomfortable in white areas makes its point but the story sucks. It has the tenor of being written by a child.
He goes with Daphne to the house of a man called Richard, only to find Daphne fleeing. He is interrogated by police and comes back to find a very mad Albright who commands him to find an accomplice.
He goes in search of Albright’s boss when he realizes that he will not be left alive and the boss turns out to be a childlike man with enormous wealth.
He treats him nicely. Easy’s character is puzzling; Easy seems to play the victimhood always. If he is not treated right, it is a natural white prejudice but if they do, that means they don’t even pay attention to them to realize that he should not be treated equally. To them he is just like furniture. (Wait, what?)
It gets even more boring. Mouse aka Raymond Alexander makes his appearance and everyone seems to be running here and there, harassed by white people and trying to avoid them, harassed by cops and afraid of them, not doing much of sleuthing anyway. I don’t see the point of the whole story because it sure is not meant as a social commentary, it does not hold your curiosity, there are no big twists in the story – so what did the author intend?
Pointless, stupid ending – at least that is in line with the rest of the book.
2/ 10
– – Krishna (Aug 2018)