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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
A guide to Walter Mosley's novels
In 1992, when reporters asked Bill Clinton about his favorite writers, he named Walter Mosley, a forty-year-old African-American mystery writer who had published a pair of novels featuring a hardboiled detective named Easy Rawlins. The endorsement made Mosley's career; before long, he was among the most popular writers in America. But it also insured that in the public's mind he would be bound forever to Easy Rawlins. This is misleading. Since 1995, Mosley has published a blues novel, two sci-fi novels, two short-story collections about a homeless sage, and a book-length essay called "What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace." And yet this apparent diversity is misleading as well. All his works share an abiding interest in the moral dimensions of everyday life, and none more so than his new novel, "The Man in My Basement" (Little, Brown; $22.95), a compelling, peculiar exploration of race and identity.
The protagonist of Mosley's book is Charles Blakey, a thirty-three-year-old African-American whose life isn't exactly moving in the direction he wants. Charles hasn't worked since he was fired from a local bank for petty theft, has no close relatives and few close friends, and spends most of his time alone in his house in the black section of Sag Harbor, reading...
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