Mosley, Walter 1952-

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Mosley, Walter 1952-

PERSONAL:

Born January 12, 1952 (some sources say January 1), in Los Angeles, CA; married Joy Kellman (a dancer and choreographer; divorced). Education: Attended Goddard College; Johnson State College, B.A., 1977; City College of the City University of New York, M.A., 1991, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY.

CAREER:

Writer and educator. Founder of publishing degree program at City College of the City University of New York; artist in residence, New York University Africana Studies Institute, New York, NY, artist in residence, 1996. Associate producer of Devil in a Blue Dress, TriStar, 1995, and executive producer of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, HBO, 1998. Also worked as a potter and a computer programmer.

MEMBER:

Mystery Writers of America (past president), Poetry Society of America (board member), TransAfrica (board member), Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (board member), National Book Awards (board member).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Shamus Award, Private Eye Writers of America, and Edgar Award nomination for best new mystery, Mystery Writers of America, both 1990, both for Devil in a Blue Dress; Literature Award, Black Caucus of the American Library Association, 1996; O'Henry Award, 1996; Anisfield Wolf Award; Grammy Award, best album liner notes, for Richard Pryor … And It's Deep, Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-92), 2002; Hammett Prize nominee, North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers, 2003, for Bad Boy Brawly Brown; Risktaker Award, Sundance Institute, 2005; Lifetime Achievement Award of the 21st Annual Celebration of Black Writing, Art Sanctuary of Philadelphia, 2005; doctorate from City College of the City University of New York.

WRITINGS:

Devil in a Blue Dress, Norton (New York, NY), 1990.

A Red Death, Norton (New York, NY), 1991.

White Butterfly, Norton (New York, NY), 1992.

Black Betty, Norton (New York, NY), 1994.

R.L.'s Dream, Norton (New York, NY), 1995.

A Little Yellow Dog, Norton (New York, NY), 1996.

Gone Fishin', Black Classic Press (Baltimore, MD), 1997.

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned: The Socrates Fortlow Stories (also see below), Norton (New York, NY), 1998.

Blue Light, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1998.

(Adaptor) Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (screenplay, based on Mosley's novel), HBO, 1998.

(Editor, with Manthia Diawara, Clyde Taylor, and Regina Austin Norton, and author of introduction) Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems, Norton (New York, NY), 1999.

Walkin' the Dog, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1999.

Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1999.

Fearless Jones, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2001.

Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Bad Boy Brawley Brown, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2002.

What Next: A Memoir toward World Peace, Black Classic Press (Baltimore, MD), 2003.

Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories, Atria (New York, NY), 2003.

Fear Itself: A Mystery, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2003.

The Man in My Basement: A Novel, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2004.

Little Scarlet, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2004.

47, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2005.

Cinnamon Kiss, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2005.

The Wave (science fiction), Warner Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Fortunate Son, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2006.

Fear of the Dark (novel), Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2006.

Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2006.

Life out of Context: Which Includes a Proposal for the Non-Violent Takeover of the House of Representatives, Nation Books (New York, NY), 2006.

This Year You Write Your Novel, Little and Brown (New York, NY), 2007.

Diablerie: A Novel, Bloomsbury USA (New York, NY), 2008.

Contributor of stories to New Yorker, GQ, Esquire, USA Weekend, Los Angeles Times Magazine, and Savoy. Contributor of nonfiction to New York Times Magazine and Nation. Author of album liner notes for Richard Pryor … And It's Deep, Too!: The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-92), 2002.

ADAPTATIONS:

Devil in a Blue Dress was adapted by Carl Franklin as a feature film starring Denzel Washington and released by TriStar, 1995.

SIDELIGHTS:

Walter Mosley's widely praised detective stories and novels include a series of hard-boiled detective tales featuring Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, who reluctantly gets drawn into investigations that lead him through the tough streets of black Los Angeles. There Easy operates in a kind of gray area, where moral and ethical certainties are hard to decipher.

Mosley had ambitions other than writing early in his career. Born in Los Angeles, he made his way to the East Coast, where he began his professional life as a computer programmer. Then one day, as he told D.J.R. Bruckner in the New York Times, "I wrote out a sentence about people on a back porch in Louisiana. I don't know where it came from. I liked it. It spoke to me." From that moment, he defined himself as a writer and fulfilled the dream of many would-be authors bound to an office: he quit to devote his full attention to his craft. He continues to write the way he began: "First there is a sentence. Then characters start coming in."

In 1990, readers first met Mosley's Easy Rawlins—and his short-tempered sidekick, Mouse—in Devil in a Blue Dress. The novel is set in 1948, when many black World War II veterans, like Easy, found jobs in the area's booming aircraft industry. When Easy loses his job, he grows concerned about the source of his next mortgage payment—until he is introduced to a wealthy white man who offers him a way to make some quick cash: he will pay Easy one hundred dollars to locate a beautiful blonde woman named Daphne Monet, who is known to frequent jazz clubs in the area. Easy takes the job but soon realizes that the task is far more dangerous than he imagined. Reviewing Devil in a Blue Dress in Publishers Weekly, Sybil Steinberg wrote, "The language is hard-boiled … and the portrait of black city life gritty and real."

Mosley followed Devil in a Blue Dress with A Red Death, set five years later. In the sequel, Easy has used stolen money to buy a couple of apartment buildings and is enjoying the life of a property owner. But he gets into a jam with the Internal Revenue Service, and his only way out is to cooperate with the FBI by spying on a union organizer suspected of being a communist. Again, he gets mired in complications as he tries to make sense out of a dark underworld of extortion and murder. "Mosley's second novel … confirms the advent of an extraordinary storyteller," remarked a contributor in Publishers Weekly.

Mosley's third novel, White Butterfly, fast-forwards to 1956. Easy is married and has a new baby, and his businesses are going well. When three young black women—"good-time girls"—are brutally slain, the crimes are barely reported. But when a white student at the University of California—Los Angeles meets a similar death, the serial killings finally make headlines. In the meantime Easy is hired by the police to help investigate. His inquiries take him through bars, rib joints, and flophouses until he makes the startling discovery that the latest victim, the daughter of a city official, was a stripper, known by her fans as the "White Butterfly." In fact, nothing in the novel is as it appears, but Easy sorts through the corruption and deception to solve the mystery—at a terrible price to his personal life. Observer correspondent Nicci Gerrard commented: "In Mosley's fictional world, there's no such thing as innocence. There's hope (which Mosley calls naivete), and anger (which Mosley calls sense). There's law (white law), cops (the real criminals) and justice (which exists only in a heaven he doesn't believe in). There's love (which he calls heartache), and trying (failure), and then, of course, there's trouble."

By the time Mosley's next Rawlins novel, Black Betty, was published in 1994, the author had earned an important endorsement. President Bill Clinton let it be known that Mosley was one of his favorite writers and the "Rawlins" books among his favorite reading. Not surprisingly, Black Betty sold 100,000 copies in hardcover and helped to earn Mosley a multibook contract for further novels in the series. As the action in Black Betty commences, Easy is well into midlife and the 1960s are in full swing. Once again in need of extra money—this time to help support two street children he has taken in—Rawlins agrees to search for a woman he knew back in Houston named Black Betty. A Publishers Weekly contributor called Black Betty "crime fiction at its distinguished best."

Mosley left his popular detective behind temporarily in 1996 to publish his first nongenre novel, R.L.'s Dream. Set in New York City in the late 1980s, the novel explores an unconventional friendship struck in hard times and offers meditations on blues music, especially the unparalleled work of Robert "R.L." Johnson. The story unfolds when Atwater "Soupspoon" Wise, dying of cancer and evicted from his skid row apartment for nonpayment of rent, is taken in by a young white neighbor named Kiki Waters, who has troubles of her own. R.L.'s Dream found many fans among critics. Entertainment Weekly contributor Tom De Haven called the book a "beautiful little masterpiece, and one probably best read while listening, very late at night, to Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings." In the San Francisco Review of Books, Paula L. Woods dubbed the novel "a mesmerizing and redemptive tale of friendship, love, and forgiveness … without doubt, the author's finest achievement to date, a rich literary gumbo with blues-tinged rhythms that make it a joy to read and a book to remember." A Publishers Weekly correspondent observed that in R.L.'s Dream, Mosley's prose "achieves a constant level of dark poetry" and concluded that the book is "a deeply moving creation of two extraordinary people who achieve a powerful humanity where it would seem almost impossible it should exist."

Mosley returned to the character of Easy Rawlins in A Little Yellow Dog. Easy, now working as a school custodian, finds himself the subject of a murder investigation after he discovers a body in the school's garden. People contributor Pam Lambert noted that "the vibrant black community is vividly evoked, and [Mosley's] reluctant hero is as ingratiating as ever." Gone Fishin', set during the 1930s, examines the lifelong bond that formed between Easy and Mouse as young men. J.D. Reed, in People, called Gone Fishin' "disturbing, elegant, magical."

In 2002 Mosley published Bad Boy Brawley Brown, the first "Easy Rawlins" novel in five years. In the work, an old friend asks Easy to locate a young man, Brawley Brown, who has joined an underground political group, the Urban Revolutionary Party. Reluctantly, Easy tackles the job but quickly finds himself in a tangled web of robbery and murder. "As always, Mosley illuminates time and place with a precision few writers can match whatever genre they choose," stated a Publishers Weekly contributor. According to Entertainment Weekly contributor Troy Patterson, "much of the richness of Bad Boy Brawly Brown derives from Mosley's skill at connecting the dots between the genre conventions and the particular texture of a life. In Rawlins, the private eye's typical baggy-eyed existentialism—the cynicism and weariness, the spiritual isolation—is married to blue-collar values and a black man's alienation."

The 2004 novel Little Scarlet is set in 1965, immediately after the Watts riots. When a black woman is murdered—apparently by a white man—the Los Angeles police employ Rawlins to investigate the case without stirring the flames of racial unrest. As People reviewer Champ Clark noted, "Little Scarlet focuses on race in a way that gives the book a surprising resonance."

In 2005 Mosley published two books, 47 and Cinnamon Kiss. 47 was Mosley's first young adult novel. The narrator is a slave boy, branded simply "47" by his master, who works on a plantation in Georgia. There he meets Tall John, an extraterrestrial masquerading as a runaway slave, who is looking for 47 to help him free the slaves as well as save the world from unearthly creatures. "The sections of 47 that deal with slave life are powerfully described and haunting, … I found the [science fiction] plot less compelling," stated Paula Rohrlick in Kliatt. However, a Publishers Weekly contributor wrote: "This thought-provoking, genre-bending account of one slave's emancipation … makes for harrowing reading."

Mosley's Cinnamon Kiss is set in the 1960s, when the hippie subculture was on the rise. Easy takes on a job to earn money so he can afford treatment for his daughter who is diagnosed with a rare blood disease. He must travel to San Francisco to search for a missing lawyer and his assistant named Cinnamon Cargill. "The historical moment is less vivid—the hippie encounters are mostly peripheral—but the human drama is more highly charged than ever," commented Bill Ott in Booklist. Roger Berger wrote in the Library Journal: "Mosley has never been a great literary stylist, but he's a good writer of detective fiction."

Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories is a short story collection featuring Mosley's most well-known character. The stories are designed to interlock based on Easy's search for his wayward friend Mouse, who eventually dies. As a result, the stories form a sort of novella as Easy deals with his midlife crisis while becoming involved in the investigation of murderers, cons, and arsonists. "In the hands of a lesser writer, these seven joined stories would fall to gimmickry, a mockery of those continuous novels written by several authors and linked only by a publisher's marketing department," wrote Oline H. Cogdill in the South Florida Sentinel. "But Mosley makes it look Easy. He always has." A contributor to the Detroit Free Press commented: "What makes the stories fascinating is the lure of Mouse's world for this decent but damaged man [Easy]."

Mosley introduced a new protagonist in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned: The Socrates Fortlow Stories. Fortlow, after spending twenty-seven years in an Indiana prison for rape and murder, is now a free man living in the largely black Watts section of Los Angeles and trying to lead a moral life. Tough yet philosophical and compassionate, he offers help to a variety of friends and acquaintances—a troubled youth, a cancer patient, an injured dog—and forges relationships with neighbors working for the betterment of their community. The interconnected short stories in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned form a "not-quite novel," in the words of a Publishers Weekly contributor, who found the volume's best feature to be "its indelible vision of ‘poor men living on the edge of mayhem.’" Library Journal contributor Lawrence Rungren thought the book occasionally "a bit contrived or didactic" but added that the main character's appeal made up for these faults. Booklist commentator Bill Ott lauded Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned as "hard-hitting, unrelenting, poignant short fiction" and remarked that Fortlow, unlike Rawlins, "is a fantasy-free hero."

Fortlow takes center stage again in Walkin' the Dog, which also takes the form of related short stories. This book finds the ex-con somewhat materially better off than in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned but still dealing with moral questions; at one point he launches a protest against police brutality. Some reviewers noted that Mosley manages to avoid the problems sometimes associated with "message" fiction by showing Fortlow's activism as arising naturally from his character. New York Times Book Review contributor Adam Goodheart opined that Mosley sometimes veers into sentimentalism, but added, "More often, though, he lets his characters make their own mistakes, and narrates their rough lives in a gentle voice." Goodheart further observed that "like his Athenian namesake, Socrates Fortlow is a streetwise philosopher, always prodding skeptically at others' certainties, offering more questions than answers." The book's concern with social issues also brought its main character comparisons with Tom Joad, hero of John Steinbeck's Depression-era saga The Grapes of Wrath. "There is a Steinbeck-esque edge to Fortlow's musings on black vs. white and rich vs. poor, and he displays shades of Tom Joad, another convicted killer who desires a better world," commented Michael Rogers in Library Journal.

Mosley ventured into another genre, science fiction, in Blue Light. The novel's action takes place in 1965, when numerous people in the San Francisco Bay area are struck by strange rays of blue light that endow them with superhuman powers. These people, dubbed "blues," are then called upon to fight a force of pure evil. The leading character is a man of mixed racial heritage—as is Mosley, the son of a white Jewish mother and a black father—but along the way, racial distinctions blur, as do gender, class, and other differences. Mosley's change of pace drew mixed reviews. Library Journal reviewer Michael Rogers, while acknowledging that Blue Light represents a departure that might put off Mosley's regular readers, pronounced it "a beautifully written, deeply spiritual novel." In 2001, Mosley published a second work of science fiction titled Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World.

The Wave, a novel with science fiction elements, was published in 2006. In the story, Errol Porter starts receiving phone calls that sound like they are from his father, who has been deceased for nine years. Errol meets the caller and learns that it is not his father, but the embodiment of his father's memories, who is part of the "wave" colony created when a meteor crashed to earth over a billion years ago. Sara Tompson, reviewing the book for Library Journal, called it "taut" and said that it "will hold readers' interest."

With the publication of Fearless Jones in 2001, Mosley introduced another mystery series. Set in 1950s Los Angeles, Fearless Jones features the duo of Paris Minton, a timid bookstore owner, and his friend Fearless Jones, a World War II veteran. After Minton encounters the seductive but dangerous Elana Love, he calls upon Fearless to help him out of trouble. A Publishers Weekly contributor called the novel "a violent, heroic, and classic piece of noir fiction." In Fear Itself, a 2003 work, Minton and Jones search for a missing man whose disappearance may be linked to a mysterious family diary. According to Time contributor Lev Grossman, "Fear Itself is a seedy, ever receding labyrinth of petty deceptions, dark desires, and unspeakable deeds."

In Fear of the Dark Mosley once again features bookseller Paris Minton and his friend Fearless Jones. In this novel, Paris's cousin Ulysses comes to him for help in getting out of blackmail scheme. When Ulysses disappears, Paris and Fearless set out to find him. A contributor to O, the Oprah Magazine, commented that the author is able to take the tale of loser and turn it "into a kind of Homeric epic." A Publishers Weekly contributor called Fear of the Dark "as entertaining as its predecessors."

In his 2006 novel titled Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel, Mosley presents an erotic novel in which Cordel Carmel discovers his girlfriend, Joelle, being sodomized by a white man they both know named Johnny Fry. Although Cordel sees the tryst taking place, Joelle and Johnny do not know that he is aware of it. Cordel then goes out and becomes enamored with porn videos, falling in love with porn star Sisypha. The novel follows Cordel as he has a number of sexual encounters, including one with Sisypha, and then eventually confronts Johnny about what he has seen. New York contributor Vikram Chandra noted that "Mosley proves he's our most recklessly ambitious popular author."

In 2006 Mosley penned the novel Fortunate Son, about two boys who, despite their differences, are practically brothers. Eric is white, strong, and lives a life of good fortune. Tommy, born with health problems, is black, impoverished, but eternally optimistic. When they are reunited after years of not seeing each other, the result is "breathtaking," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. The same reviewer wrote: "Mosley shows how a certain kind of inarticulate, carnal, involuntary affection transcends just about anything."

The Man in My Basement is a story about a black man who has a white man in a cage in the basement. The black man, Charles Blakely, has been fired from his bank job for stealing when Anniston Bennet comes to his door. The stranger offers Charles fifty thousand dollars to live in his basement for the next two months.

Before long, Charles realizes that Anniston does not want to just live in his basement but to become Charles's prisoner as part of an effort to pay a debt for past wrongs. "The men's conversations signal a constantly shifting of power between the two as Charles, emboldened with a new respect for his history, grows stronger and Anniston, confessing his past, grows weaker," wrote Oline H. Cogdill in the South Florida Sentinel.

Mosley has occasionally produced nonfiction, serving as coeditor of Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems, in which black intellectuals discuss various social ills, and writing a critique of capitalism in Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History. But he seeks to explore the problems of modern life in his fiction as well. In his detective stories, his aim is less to create a memorable gumshoe than it is to explore the ethical dilemmas that the character constantly faces. As Mosley told D.J.R. Bruckner of the New York Times: "Mysteries, stories about crime, about detectives, are the ones that really ask the existentialist questions such as ‘How do I act in an imperfect world when I want to be perfect?’ I'm not really into clues and that sort of thing, although I do put them in my stories. I like the moral questions."

In What Next: A Memoir toward World Peace Mosley offers a political tome on how African Americans, who have a unique understanding of the wrongs society can inflict on individuals and groups, can help work toward world peace. The author writes of his father's contribution in World War II and draws on both his father's and grandfather's folk wisdom to discuss how he wants to live in a world of spiritual harmony. The author includes a list of core values that are important to live by in a peaceful world and provides suggestions for the African American community to organize into grassroots groups to address various issues of world peace. "What Next is a heart-stirring, step-by-step explanation of African American powers and responsibilities to fathers, mothers, daughters and sons," wrote Judy Simmons in Black Issues Book Review. "Readers will experience the love and reverence Walter Mosley has crafted into this encouragement affirmation of all humanity."

Mosley turns his thoughts once again to politics and society in his book Life out of Context: Which Includes a Proposal for the Non-Violent Takeover of the House of Representatives. In the book, Mosley talks of American lack of context in viewing the world and its problems and also chides Americans for their narrow-mindedness. The author goes on to make suggestions concerning how to help Americans see the world in context, from strange suggestions such as giant video screens that show crises around the world to creating a new political party to challenge the Democrats and Republicans. Hazel Rochman, writing in Booklist, noted that Life out of Context is "sure to spark controversy."

Mosley provides a writer's guide with his book This Year You Write Your Novel, which provides pointers on writing a complete novel within one year. In a review in Booklist, David Pitt called This Year You Write Your Novel "gracefully written."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African American Review, summer, 1997, Roger A. Berger, "‘The Black Dick’: Race, Sexuality, and Discourse in the L.A. Novels of Walter Mosley," pp. 281-295.

African Business, November, 2005, review of The Man in My Basement: A Novel, p. 65.

Armchair Detective, spring, 1991, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 228; winter, 1992, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 123.

Atlantic, October, 2006, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 127.

Black Issues Book Review, July, 2000, Amy Alexander, review of Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History, p. 52; November-December, 2001, Tony Lindsay, review of Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World, p. 57; January-February 2003, Binti L. Villinger, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 31; May-June, 2003, Judy Simmons, review of What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace, p. 64; May-June, 2005, Angela P. Dodson, "Walter Mosely" award announcement, p. 8.

Black Issues in Higher Education, April 29, 1999, Patricia Reid-Merritt, review of Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems, p. 34.

Blade (Toronto, OH), September 24, 2006, Tahree Lane, "A Man of Opinion: Walter Mosley's Strength Shines through in Well-crafted Writing."

Book, May-June, 2001, "Walter Mosley Meets Colson Whitehead"; January-February, 2002, Don McLeese, review of Futureland, p. 73.

Booklist, August, 1997, Bill Ott, review of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, p. 1848; September 1, 1998, Ray Olson, review of Blue Light, p. 6; January 1, 2000, Mary Carroll, review of Workin' on the Chain Gang, p. 840; September 1, 2001, Ray Olson, review of Futureland, p. 4; December 1, 2002, Keir Graff, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 629; February 15, 2003, Vernon Ford, review of What Next, p. 1039; October 15, 2003, Keir Graff, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 358; June 1, 2005, Bill Ott, review of Cinnamon Kiss, p. 1712; October 15, 2005, Ray Olson, review of The Wave, p. 5; December 15, 2005, Hazel Rochman, review of Life out of Context: Which Includes a Proposal for the Non-Violent Takeover of the House of Representatives, p. 8; August 1, 2006, Bill Ott, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 7; November 15, 2006, Keir Graff, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 7; February 15, 2007, David Pitt, review of This Year You Write Your Novel, p. 24.

Chicago Tribune, July 1, 1990, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 6.

Detroit Free Press, January 3, 2003, Lev Raphael, review of Six Easy Pieces.

Ebony, April, 2003, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 23; September, 2006, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 28.

Entertainment Weekly, August 18, 1995, Tom De Haven, review of R.L.'s Dream, pp. 47-48; July 19, 2002, Troy Patterson, review of Bad Boy Brawly Brown, p. 66; January 17, 2003, Bruce Fretts, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 84; January 9, 2004, Tom Sinclair, review of The Man in the Basement, p. 87; July 9, 2004, Tom Sinclair, review of Little Scarlet, p. 94; October 6, 2006, Gilbert Cruz, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 11; December 22, 2006, Jennifer Reese, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 86.

Esquire, June, 1994, review of Black Betty, p. 42.

Essence, April, 2000, Elsie B. Washington, review of Workin' on the Chain Gang, p. 88.

Forbes, August 11, 1997, Steve Forbes, review of Gone Fishin', p. 28.

Hollywood Reporter, March 30, 2007, "Mosley Sued," p. 6.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2001, review of Futureland, p. 1253; November 15, 2002, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 1660; November 1, 2003, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 1291; July 1, 2006, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 657; October 15, 2006, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 1039.

Kliatt, May, 2005, Paula Rohrlick, review of 47, p. 16.

Library Journal, October 1, 1997, Lawrence Rungren, review of Always Outnumbered, Always Out-gunned, p. 124; October 1, 1998, Michael Rogers, review of Blue Light, p. 134; August, 1999, p. 141; February 1, 2000, Anthony O. Edmonds, review of Workin' on the Chain Gang, p. 105; June 1, 2001, Roger A. Berger, review of Fearless Jones, p. 224; October 1, 2001, Rachel Singer Gordon, review of Futureland, p. 145; January, 2003, Michael Rogers, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 164; December, 2003, Michael Rogers, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 168; June 1, 2004, Michael Rogers, "Walter Mosley," p. 107; August 1, 2005, Roger A. Berger, review of Cinnamon Kiss, p. 60; January 1, 2006, Sara Tompson, review of The Wave, p. 105; November 1, 2006, Karen Kleckner, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 69.

London Independent, April 9, 2007, John Williams, review of Killing Johnny Fry.

Los Angeles Magazine, August, 2002, Greil Marcus, "In the Secret Country," pp. 98-103.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 29, 1990, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 3; July 12, 1992, review of White Butterfly, p. 2; June 5, 1994, review of Black Betty, p. 3; August 6, 1995, review of R.L.'s Dream, pp. 3, 8.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 27, 2001, Jim Higgins, review of Futureland.

Newsweek, July 9, 1990, Malcolm Jones, Jr., review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 65; April 2, 2007, "A Life in Books: Walter Mosley," p. 15.

New York, January 15, 2007, Vikram Chandra, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 60.

New Yorker, September 17, 1990, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 110; January 19, 2004, Ben Greenman, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 88.

New York Times, September 4, 1990, D.J.R. Bruckner, "Detective Stories Are Novelist's Route to Moral Questions," p. B1; March 20, 2000, Felicia R. Lee, "Walter Mosley: Bracing Views from a Man of Mysteries."

New York Times Book Review, September 6, 1992, Parnell Hall, review of White Butterfly, p. 25; June 16, 1996, R.W.B. Lewis, review of A Little Yellow Dog; November 9, 1997, Sven Birkets, review of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned; November 7, 1999, Adam Goodheart, review of Walkin' the Dog; November 25, 2001, Nikki Dillon, review of Futureland, p. 18; February 8, 2004, Deborah Solomon, "It's the Money, Stupid"; July 25, 2004, Marilyn Stasio, review of Little Scarlet, p. 19; April 3, 2005, Ihsan Taylor, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 28; September 24, 2006, Marilyn Stasio, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 19; January 21, 2007, Charles Taylor, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 19.

O, the Oprah Magazine, October, 2006, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 242.

Observer (London, England), October 23, 1994, Nicci Gerrard, review of White Butterfly, p. 20.

People, July 15, 1996, Pam Lambert, review of A Little Yellow Dog, pp. 37-38; March 3, 1997, J.D. Reed, review of Gone Fishin', p. 43; August 9, 1999, p. 338, November 1, 1999, William Plummer, review of Walkin' the Dog, p. 551; February 9, 2004, V.R. Peterson, review of The Man in My Basement, p. 41; July 26, 2004, Champ Clark, review of Little Scarlet, p. 47.

Publishers Weekly, June 1, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of Devil in a Blue Dress, p. 46; May 17, 1991, review of A Red Death, p. 57; September 5, 1994, review of Black Betty, p. 32; May 29, 1995, review of R.L.'s Dream, p. 65; May 13, 1996, review of A Little Yellow Dog, p. 58; October 6, 1997, review of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, p. 74; January 11, 1999, review of Black Genius, p. 61; November 15, 1999, review of Workin' on the Chain Gang, p. 46; May 28, 2001, review of Fearless Jones, p. 53, September 10, 2001, review of Futureland, p. 65, and Robert C. Hahn, "PW Talks with Walter Mosley," p. 54; June 17, 2002, review of Bad Boy Brawly Brown, p. 45; December 16, 2002, review of Six Easy Pieces, p. 49; June 16, 2003, review of Fear Itself, p. 54; May 24, 2004, review of Little Scarlet, pp. 47-48; May 16, 2005, review of 47, p. 64; November 14, 2005, review of Life out of Context, p. 57; February 13, 2006, review of Fortunate Son, p. 62; July 31, 2006, review of Fear of the Dark, p. 47; October 30, 2006, review of Killing Johnny Fry, p. 37.

San Francisco Review of Books, February, 1991, review of A Red Death, p. 38; September-October, 1995, Paula L. Woods, review of R.L.'s Dream, pp. 12-13.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL), September 20, 2006, Oline H. Cogdill, review of Fear of the Dark; January 31, 2003, Oline H. Cogdill, review of Six Easy Pieces; February 4, 2004, Oline H. Cogdill, review of The Man in My Basement.

Time, August 11, 2003, Lev Grossman, "If You Read Only One Mystery Novel This Summer …," p. 58.

Vanity Fair, February, 1993, Christopher Hitchens, "The Tribes of Walter Mosley," p. 46.

Wall Street Journal, July 24, 1991, Tom Nolan, review of A Red Death, p. A8.

Washington Post Book World, August 16, 1992, review of White Butterfly, p. 6; August 20, 1995, review of R.L.'s Dream, p. 7.

Writer, December, 1999, Lewis Burke Frumkes, "A Conversation with Walter Mosley," p. 20.