''Nobody knew what I was up to and that made me sort of invisible'' is Easy's way of explaining the ''secret glee'' he takes in the anonymity conferred by his lone-wolf calling. Mosley writes in a talking-blues style that is its own kind of music.īeing a black man in a white man's society also gives his hero a professional edge in the gray world of the private detective. From his off-the-lip description of a notorious gangster (''Frank was in the hurting trade'') to his vibrant scenes of life in neighborhood barbershops and whorehouses, Mr.
There's more juice in the passing players, whose raffish escapades and roaring humor animate this after-dark world. The mysterious femme fatale in this Chandleresque plot is too limply drawn to justify all the murderous double-crossing that goes on in her honor. ''That girl is the devil, man,'' Easy advises a smitten saloonkeeper. But this cool operator is unprepared for the interracial crookedness and wholesale killing that break out after a provocative white woman sashays into his Los Angeles neighborhood to party in its black nightspots. ''I was used to white people by 1948,'' says Easy Rawlins, a World War II veteran who turns private eye in Walter Mosley's jazzy novel, DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (Norton, $18.95). More nursery tales as good and tough as this one, for a start. Not one but two romantic liaisons present themselves to Hope, who also finds a moment to ponder his ever-amusing quandary about women and what they want. The author, who likes to have fun in this nursery rhyme series, has plenty of it here.
Considering the paucity of plausible suspects and motives in this baffling who(else coulda)dunit, the clue-gathering process is clear and fair, allowing the resolution to fall into place like a deadbolt. But the real strength to flex those muscles comes from the perfectly constructed plot. McBain's square-jawed dialogue and stout grip on detection procedures give his narrative the muscularity characteristic of the whole Hope series. Indeed, it looks like another no-win situation for Hope, the patron saint defense attorney for such hopeless causes. Not long before their deaths, the men had been acquitted of gang-raping the wife of a rich local farmer so, when hard evidence turns up to implicate the husband of the rape victim, the new assistant state attorney (whose courtroom style is described as ''flamboyant, seductive, aggressive, unrelenting, and unforgiving'') naturally thinks she's got a lock on the case. Ed McBain's new Matthew Hope mystery, THREE BLIND MICE (Arcade/Little, Brown, $18.95), takes its ironic nursery rhyme title from the grisly ritual slaying of three Vietnamese kitchen helpers who lived in a Florida coastal town called Calusa.
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