Dear Doug Bassett,
Walter Mosley's Little Yellow Dog is one of his sexier
"noire" as-in-black-detective, African American community
detective novels. There is also plenty of music in the
background. The writing, well the plotting, reminds me of
Chandler. But Mosley is in my opinion one of the greater
novelists to come along in a long time. His characterizations
are moving, complex, and as memorable as character work in
grate "literature." His range is wider than the hard boiled
Black Mask tradition, but precisely within it. He is also one
of our finest black authors. This novel, like all of them,
has a lot of texture, both historical and social.
His narrative voice, in all his writings, is always
intelligent, probing, unsentimental, but sensitive. One of my
favorites by him is Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned--an
episodic novel, or collection of short stories that also
works as a novel--it is less a detective story than a story
about a community and relationships between friends and
neighbors. But his classic detective novel series, of which
Little Yellow Dog is a later entry, is also about these same
themes.
Can't go wrong with Mosley.
Keith
keithdeutsch@earthlink.net
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