10 Essential Walter Mosley Reads

Walter Mosley is an acclaimed American novelist who has written over 60 novels. Walter has received a number of awards for storytelling throughout his storied career, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Foundation, a Grammy for Best Album Notes in 2002, and the Edgar Grand Master Award in 2016, awarded to him by the Mystery Writers of America. Walter also won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work — Fiction in 2008 for Blonde Faith, and 2010 for The Long Fall. His debut novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990), marked the first installation in his Easy Rawlins mystery series. Walter also authored many other nominated and notable works, such as Cinnamon Kiss (2006), The Man in My Basement (2004), Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore (2014), and most recently, The Awkward Black Man (2020).

Acclaimed novelist Walter Mosley has written an array of books on various topics, including race, class, crime, corruption, and injustice. Some essential Walter Mosley reads are:

1. 1. The Easy Rawlins series (1990–present): Widely regarded as Walter’s signature achievement, this 14-book series (and counting) follows the character of Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, a family man and reluctant detective, from 1948 to 1968 as he traverses a Los Angeles fraught with crime, corruption, and racism. Some titles in the Easy Rawlins series include A Red Death (1991), White Butterfly (1992), A Little Yellow Dog (1996), Gone Fishin’ (1997), Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002), Little Scarlet (2004), and Charcoal Joe (2016).
2. 2. RL’s Dream (1995): Walter’s first non-Rawlins effort focuses on Atwater “Soupspoon” Wise, a Delta bluesman caught between his conditional existence on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and his dreamlike memories of Robert Johnson, the highly mythologized real-life 1930s guitarist.
3. 3. The Socrates Fortlow series (1997–2008): These three collections of interwoven short stories revolve around Socrates Fortlow, an ex-con who’s “wide in the shoulder and thick in his chest.” After serving time at an Indiana prison, Fortlow finds a new home in South Los Angeles, where he tries, like so many of Walter’s protagonists, to live according to his own moral code. These books include the titles Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997), Walkin’ the Dog (1999), and The Right Mistake (2008), the first of which would go on to receive an O. Henry Award, a publishing honor for exceptional short stories.
4. 4. Blue Light (1998): Walter’s science fiction debut, set in the Bay Area, concerns an otherworldly blue light that transforms many of the novel’s characters into heightened versions of themselves. The story follows the characters as they grapple with their newfound abilities and mental health issues.
5. 5. Workin’ on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History (2000): Walter makes an elegant case for American capitalism as a system of cultural and economic oppression in his nonfiction monograph.
6. 6. Fearless Jones series (2001–2006): Walter’s second mystery series also takes place in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s. The hero is a detective, Fearless Jones, but the story is told through a timid bookseller named Paris Minton. These novels are lighter and looser than the Easy Rawlins books, with plots that grow out of the collaboration between Jones and Minton rather than self-protective solitude. The Fearless Jones series features the titles like Fear Itself (2003) and Fear of the Dark (2006).
7. 7. Fortunate Son (2006): Walter returns to Southern California to tell the story of a Black man and a white man who grew up together and, after many years apart, reunite as adults, offering contrasting realities of privilege and hardship.
8. 8. The Leonid McGill series (2009–2020): Walter takes on New York City for his third mystery series, which he writes with gritty grandeur. The novel follows Leonid McGill, a former boxer turned private detective adrift in a city—and a world—he doesn’t quite recognize anymore. The Leonid McGill series includes titles like award-winning The Long Fall (2009), All I Did Was Shoot My Man (2012), and And Sometimes I Wonder About You (2015).
9. 9. The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2010): After watching his mother struggle through the early stages of dementia, Walter conjures up a protagonist wrestling with age and illness. The story unfolds as Ptolemy undergoes an experimental treatment for dementia, unlocking difficult—and unavoidable—memories.
10. 10. Down the River Unto the Sea (2018): Recipient of a 2019 Edgar Award for Best Novel, this standalone follows Joe King Oliver, an ex-cop from Brooklyn once framed for sexual assault, who must solve both his own case and that of a Black militant accused of killing two NYPD officers.

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