Devil in a Blue Dress
Overview
Hardboiled
Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style, most commonly associated with detective stories, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex. The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined...
mystery novel
Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...
by Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley
Walter Ellis Mosley is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los...
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The text centers on the main character, Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, and his transformation from a day laborer into a detective. The story begins with Easy out-of-work and unable to pay his mortgage. He is sitting in a bar run by Joppy, a friend from Texas, when a man named DeWitt Albright walks into the bar and offers him a job finding a young woman named Daphne Monet.
Quotations
Easy Rawlins: A man once told me that you step out of your door in the morning, and you are already in trouble. The only question is are you on top of that trouble or not?
Mouse: You said don't shoot him, right? Well I didn't. I strangled him. If you didn't want me to kill him, why did you leave me alone with him?
Kid: What do you want? DeWitt Albright: What do I want? I want to see your brains.