Of all the books that I read this quarter, the two that I want to shout out about from the rooftops are two detective noir crime novels.

Easy Rawlins Reluctant Detective in Devil in The Blue Dress

In Devil In The Blue Dress, we meet our Black protagonist, Easy Rawlins hanging out in a bar in Los Angeles. Recently unemployed, chucked from the Boeing factory in El Segundo, Rawlins is contemplating his next steps when he is offered a missing person’s job. He must find the missing girlfriend of a local politician — she is the titular devil in the blue dress. All instincts tell Rawlins to run, but he needs the money to hold on to the life he has worked hard to build. Ironically, this leads him back into the violent, murderous criminal world he had left behind.

“The law,” he continued, “is made by the rich people so that the poor people can’t get ahead…”
― Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress

Walter Mosley places the story in black and ethnic neighborhoods of mid-century Los Angeles. It’s a place of hidden bars, jazz music, street violence, and lives lived in fear and rebellion. The city itself is a mood.

In Devil in The Blue Dress, the violence is visceral and a constant reminder of the price to be paid to survive in a racist world. The plot is simple. However, Mosley deftly weaves in city politics, police brutality, and the history of violence in poor neighborhoods. By making Rawlins an army veteran, he also gives voice to the disconnect Black veterans feel when they fight for a country which doesn’t always offer them the very liberty and dignity it promises.

Gritty, dark, and full of uncomfortable truths, Mosley writes a powerful novel in the guise of a detective story, which is why it’s worth your time.

Murder In The British Raj

A Rising Man

With A Rising Man, Abir Mukherjee takes us further back in history, to pre-independent India. Sam Wyndham, a Scotland Yard Detective from London, recently widowed, looks eastward to find an escape. He welcomes a posting in the swampy heat of colonial Calcutta.

The British rule in India is in its last 50 years, only they don’t know it. There is growing animosity between the locals and the British population. The infamous Rowlatt Act of 1919, allowing detention without trial, has just been passed, and the freedom revolutionaries are a hot target for the British Home Office. In this bristling climate, Sam lands his first homicide case. The murder of a senior British Official near a brothel raises throws Sam in the underbelly of British rule in Calcutta and all its ugly wheeling & dealings.

“Abominable business this MacAuley affair,’ said Peters to no one in particular. ‘Absolutely dreadful,’ tutted Mrs Tebbit. ‘It makes you wonder if any of us are safe in our beds.’ I could have pointed out that MacAuley hadn’t been murdered in his bed, but five miles away in an alley behind a whore house.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Rising Man

Initially, I wondered at Mukherjee’s odd choice of centering the narrative a white protagonist and pairing him an Indian sidekick, Banerjee. As the pages progressed, the intention seemed clear. To see the implicit, casual racism by seemingly well-meaning people is the perfect way to drive home the cruelty of empire. Even Sam, who is hardly impressed by the British rule, doesn’t question his place, his authority and his implicit participation in the colonial rule. The everyday oppression of the locals doesn’t come just from the ruling government but also from the hordes of middle class Englishman calling this colony their home and reaping its benefits.

Sargent Banerjee provides an obvious contrast. He is often at the receiving end of prejudiced behavior by his own colleagues. As shown, he will also have a personal conflict when he will have to choose between his loyalty to the Crown or the Indian cause.

In this novel, Mukherjee painstakingly captures the charm of erstwhile Calcutta creating biggest pull of the story for me. I felt I was there. Sam’s investigations take him to the Writer’s Building and to Fort William. He will attend fancy restaurants and take an evening stroll down the avenues in Lal Bazar. Mukerjee subtly juxtaposes how discriminating ‘glory of the raj’ is as locals are often missing from these tableaus.

Both Mosley & Mukherjee follow the templates of noir detective fiction and thus inherit some of its flaws. Female characters are not well rounded and play only the love interest, the victim or the villain. There is more action than sleuthing, and stuff happening moves the plot more than actual crime solving.

Flaws aside, both novels are atmospheric, political and are centered in historical truths. Entertaining and page-turners in their own right as detective novels, they also teach us something new.

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