What do a crooked Army captain, two vanished husbands, a blonde bank teller and a village-killing assassin named Christmas Black have in common? That’s Easy.
Walter Mosley’s Blonde Faith is the final book of the Easy Rawlins series. Like every Easy tale, it starts with an uncomfortable proposition, builds with unforgettably drawn characters, and ends with an explosive, unforeseen conclusion.
Our favorite detective is in 1967 LA, navigating post-riots politics and suffering mightily from a broken heart. The love of his life, Bonnie, a flight attendant, is engaged to a West African prince who helped get specialized medical treatment for Easy’s daughter, who she loves. Feather, the daughter, is growing into adolescence and away from Easy; his adopted son Jesus just had a baby and is starting his own family.
All in all, it’s a dangerously depressed Easy who falls into one of his most tangled cases yet.
Christmas Black, trained by Uncle Sam to be a killing machine, has up and disappeared, leaving behind only a few clues: a soldier’s corpse, a woman’s photo, and the little Vietnamese girl he’s been raising after killing her entire family. Not surprisingly, a man this lethal is friends with Mouse. But unlike Mouse, Black lives by an almost samurai code of honor. Easy must find Black and the white woman in the photo while keeping his family safe from a gang of vicious, heroin-smuggling soldiers.
Mosley’s a master at creating characters with fascinating backstories, and “Blonde Faith” is no different. But a hopelessness pervades this series-ending book, inescapable as the casual, malicious discrimination that permeates Easy’s life. It would be enough for the author to simply describe the incidents of injustice Easy faces at the hands of white police, car salesmen, waitresses and security guards. But Mosley takes you into Easy’s insides, each and every time, forcing you to feel not just the rage, but the repetitiveness of personal and institutional racism. It’s wearying, and though Easy’s escalating acts of grief-induced rebellion break up the monotony, you know that nothing good can come of it.
By the time the shockingly mundane ending rolls around, it’s almost a relief to close the book on these desperate lives, but you’re left with the underlying dread of knowing not that much has changed.
This is a difficult book for a newcomer to the series, but if you’re a die-hard Easy Rawlins fan, there’s no way to resist learning the hero’s fate.
