FAMILY MATTERS: WALTER MOSLEY'S GRAY DAWN

With Gray Dawn, Walter Mosley uses his famed private eye, Easy Rawlins, to examine the concept of family, the ones we are raised in and bound by blood as well as those we build and choose. He portrays the strength and struggles of both and its effect on its most grounded members. The book pulls a great hat trick of dealing with such heavy concepts while being light on its feet.

Things kick into gear when Santangelo Burris hires easy to find his aunt Latisha James for his sick grandmother. Easy doesn't buy the reason, but guilt tugs at hm to help out a working black man. Easy first learns that Latisha is connected to a notorious numbers runner, then the search grows more dangerous when it leads to three dead white people in Bel Air. If that's not enough, his old lover Amethystine Stoller, comes back in his life and his adopted son, Jesus, is in trouble with some narcotics agents.

For all the the story throws at Easy, Mosley keep the story clear and moving forward. His skills as an experienced master craftsman storyteller mainly contributes to this. He knows exactly which cards to lay down with the book's reveals and escalating action and when. He also makes most of the plot points feel personal. Even the initial taking of the case is tied to Easy's nostalgia for a time when African Americans had more of an eye out for each other. The thicker into the case he gets, the more he learns it is connected to him, so there is no turning back. Then there is Mosley's crisp yet illustrative prose style. Like notes from Charlie Parker's saxophone, his his words creates a river of notes that both stand out and connects for a beautiful flow.

Gray Dawn shared the propulsiveness of the early Easy Rawlins novels. Walter Mosley's V-8 engine of a plot moves you down the road at an exhilarating pace that proves steady enough of a pace to get a full view of our hero's journey. It's always a trip with Mosley at the wheel