So far so good, but it is in the nature of narrative that great heroes must have great weaknesses if they are to avoid the genre of fairy tale. Philip Marlowe knew himself to be compromised by the Los Angeles of the ’40s, drank heavily and lost as many fights as he won; Holmes loved cocaine; Bond was a relentless womanizer; Lancelot was a passionate adulterer and traitor to his king — and Quixote was mad. Rawlins, by contrast, is pretty much flawless. Perhaps Mosley wants to show us that a black knight is even better than a white knight, which would explain why dear old Easy hardly misses an opportunity to spell out his virtues (”That’s why she liked me, I stood up for myself but still didn’t lord it over other people when I had the upper hand”) and can come across as somewhat anachronistic in his political correctness.

Personally, I found myself wishing that our hero possessed more in the way of breadth and depth. As I understand it, Watts was part of a mighty revolution that changed America and perhaps the world. I would have liked Rawlins to experience more directly for us the sheer psychological rawness of that time, which Mosley prefers to elicit from third parties: the catharsis following the sudden release of centuries of pent-up rage, the thrill and fear of anarchy, the gnawing terror of the rough beast now unleashed, the squalor and shame of the looting of blacks by blacks, the pride of the African American community that was finally fighting back. Certainly, Easy has plenty of very reasonable, even anodyne, opinions about race and riots; not a lot of convincing gut reaction, however. He is just a tad too good to be true. That aside, Little Scarlet is a terrific yarn from a tormented moment in recent American history.

John Burdett has published a number of novels, the most recent being “Bangkok 8″.

Pages: 1 2 3 4