“Hardly anybody in America has written about black male heroes,” he explains. I ask Mosley if he would ever write a novel with a central Jewish character. But by story’s end, they look as powerful as Superman. In outward appearance they may seem as ordinary as Clark Kent-flawed, conflicted, even weak. And like the heroes of Mosley’s comic book collection of more than 30,000, when they do rescue the vulnerable, they become larger than life. Mosley’s black characters are outsiders, who solve the riddle despite the stubborn barrier of prejudice, besting a system stacked against them. But his New York City policemen, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, are insiders battling the mean streets on behalf of a meaner system. Chester Himes broke this ground, creating a detective series that featured two black cops in Harlem in the 1960s. Mosley is not the first black writer to portray blacks solving crimes in mystery novels.

And in 1995, Denzel Washington starred as Easy in a neo-noir film version of Devil in a Blue Dress. Mosley’s next book, Black Betty, sold more than 100,000 copies. Then during the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton was spotted with a copy of Devil in a Blue Dress and later, as president, he told The Wall Street Journal that it was interesting “for all Americans” to see “the way it was from a black person’s view…in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s.” The endorsement helped catapult the hardworking wage earner to literary stardom.

Two more novels in the Easy Rawlins series followed- A Red Death in 1991 and White Butterfly in 1992. There was critical acclaim, but it was muted. Norton & Company published Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990.

Tuten was so impressed that he showed it to his own agent, Gloria Loomis, who also liked the novel, and W.W. Seeking editorial guidance, he gave the manuscript to Tuten, his CCNY advisor. After reading Graham Greene’s screenplay, The Third Man, he decided to rework the Easy Rawlins story into a mystery novel. He flung his inaugural work toward the publishing giants of New York.

For one of his classes, he had written a novella featuring a man named Ezekiel Rawlins.

Black betty walter mosley summary