By Colleen Long
Wire Service Correspondent

NEW YORK (AP) – When the world first met Easy Rawlins, he was 28. It was post-World War II Los Angeles – a city full of opportunity and without a long history – not a bad place to be for a smart, confident black man. Fired from his job, Easy was in need of fast cash to pay his mortgage. So he agreed to find a missing blonde, and his adventures began.
The book was “Devil in a Blue Dress,” the 1990 tale that launched a best-selling crime series by Walter Mosley.
Ten novels later, the private eye is world-weary. He’s aged about 20 years, seen plenty of blood and solved many mysteries. Race relations in Southern California have disintegrated since the 1965 Watts’ riots. He has a family to look after, and he has lost the love of his life.
Time has taken an emotional and physical toll on Easy. And Mosley has decided it’s time to say goodbye.
“ Blonde Faith,” the final book in the series, is a melancholy send-off for Easy and his gang – his adopted kids Feather and Jesus; Mouse, his skittish and dangerous best friend; and Bonnie Shay, his love.
And Mosley isn’t even going to miss him.
“ I’ve got other things to write,’’ he says. “I’ve written 3,000 pages of Easy Rawlins. If you really miss him, go back and reread.”
The Easy Rawlins books are disguised as crime novels, but they’re really a narrative of American race relations from World War II until civil rights era of the 1960s. Starting with “Devil in a Blue Dress,” we watch Easy navigate through a complicated system of society – his observations on life and race razor-sharp – in such books as “Cinnamon Kiss” and “Six Easy Pieces.” Through it all, Easy manages to remain a noble guy.
The character is widely regarded as the best in the genre. Bill Adams, mystery and thrillers buyer at Borders, Inc., said the success of the character is due in part to a loyal following – after 10 books, readers are familiar with a character, and want to read more. But it’s also the setting.
“ People really identify with the historical content,” Adams said. “He paints a great picture of that period and all the things going on at that time, and people want to learn more, or they identify with the time and want to read about it.”
Mosley says it’s all in a day’s work.
“ It is the job of a novelist to tell a story that engages somebody, about a world that is different, at least in perspective,” he says. “A lot of times novelists, literary people will say that reading should be challenging. But a writer should never say that. The writer should say, ‘I’m making this as accessible as possible.’”
Mosley grew up an only child in Los Angeles, his mother white and Jewish, and his father black, and the diversity is reflected in his writing. After graduating from Johnson State College in Johnson, Vt., in 1977, he worked a number of jobs before moving to New York City. He quit work as a computer programmer to study writing at The City College of New York, where he later developed a publishing program aimed at young, urban residents.
Writing comes easy to Mosley, 55, who published “Devil in a Blue Dress,” his first novel, while in his 30s. He says he’s not disciplined, but writes three hours every day in his Brooklyn office and has published 28 books. He can’t explain where his ideas originate, but he’s got enough to keep him busy for two lifetimes. He’s written young adult books, science fiction, erotica, biography, screen plays and even a book on how to write a novel.
And he’s working on a collection of science fiction novellas that have no connection to each other, except for the theme: In every one, a black man destroys the world.
But Mosley is mostly known for his crime books – a fact that he blames on marketing. And he’s doing his best to avoid being pigeonholed, although he sort of dresses like a private eye in a black suit, long black coat and hat.
“ If you look at the history of writing, most people write all kinds of different things. It’s only recently that people concentrate, and that’s because it’s how writers can be sold,” he says.
Among the books he has coming out in next few months: “Diablerie,” a noir tale about a guy living a very tamped down psychological life; “The Tempest Tales,” a short-story collection and homage to Langston Hughes’ “The Simple Stories;” and the third book in a series about a character named Socrates Fortlow.
Being black in America is a large component of Mosley’s work, and he’s been hailed as chronicler of race relations, someone whose poignant social commentary has inspired black writers and made black heroes everyday reading. But he doesn’t think of himself as representing anything other than simply writing.
“ I may be representative for somebody else, but not for me. I’m doing what I think is important. I love writing, and I write about black male heroes. I don’t really want to write about anything else, so I don’t.”
Editors and publishers say he’s made a difference. Mosley published a prequel to “Devil in a Blue Dress,’’ called “Gone Fishin’,” with Black Classic Press in Maryland.
“ It raised our profile tremendously in the black community, and internationally,” said W. Paul Coates, Black Classic Press publisher. “It allowed us to play in the game of publishing books. Most small houses, black or white, don’t get into the game.”
Coates said Mosley is an extraordinary writer because he manages to write engaging, plot-driven books that still manage to be political and critique society.
“ He’s just full of stories, all kinds of stories,” Coates said. “It’s a good thing he is in writing, because he’d just bust if he didn’t get all those stories out.”
“ My father, when he was a kid, he wanted to be a writer, and he wrote some things, but he was a kid, and he was black, and it was the deep South. That didn’t really work,” Mosley says.
So he’s working on a Web site called the Democracy Initiative that he says will help put the power back into public hands. The site will set up voters with political activists and offer advice and aid on how to take action for causes that are important to the public – from saving cats to gun rights to abortion rights.
“ It’s not partisan – that’s the best thing,” he says.
“ You can be in the Aryan brotherhood in Idaho, or a Black Nationalist Separatist in Detroit and still want education and medical care for your children. You can say, ‘Look, we may not get along or understand each other, but we both want this for our kids. Now that’s progress.”

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