Book Review: Cinnamon Kiss

Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM

Cinnamon Kiss     Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC
Walter Mosley
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Historical
Series: Easy Rawlins # 9
Little, Brown; $33.95 hardcover; 312 pages

It’s the Summer of Love, but Easy Rawlins hasn’t got love on his mind. His daughter Feather is in dire need of expensive medical treatment, and so far the only way he’s found of raising the necessary tens of thousands of dollars is to join his old friend Mouse in an armoured-car robbery. Luckily, his friend and fellow private investigator Saul Lynx comes up with an honest job for Easy, working with him for another investigator, Robert E. Lee. Easy’s job is to find eccentric young attorney Axel Bowers and his assistant, Philomena “Cinnamon” Cargill, both of whom have gone missing.

His first stop is Bowers’s house in Berkeley. There, with the help of a hippie named Dream Dog, Easy searches for clues. He soon discovers what happened to Axel Bowers, and it’s not pretty. Before long, Easy is being pursued by one Joe Cicero, a stone killer if there ever was one, even while he pursues the elusive Cinnamon and the Nazi legacy of Bowers’s family.

I don’t think there’s much that hasn’t been said about Walter Mosley. He is without a doubt one of the masters of American literature writing today. You can have your Tom Wolfes, your John Updikes. Give me Walter Mosley, a writer who transcends his chosen genre and turns it into something akin to prose poetry. No one else can handle race relations like him.

Easy Rawlins is an icon of crime fiction. Through this character, Mosley brings the events of the mid-twentieth century to life. Easy is a black man in a white man’s job, penetrating the darker underbelly of society that even Philip Marlowe didn’t dare touch.

Catherine Thompson - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM