Six Easy Pieces
Walter Mosley, 2003


The eighth Easy Rawlins book. This is a collection of short stories, each a involving a separate mini-mystery, but all interconnected and taking place over a period of a few months. During the course of these cases, the reader gets more glimpses into Easy’s life, his relationship with his two adopted children, Jesus and Feather, and his common-law wife Bonnie (who’s often out of town due to her job as a flight attendant), and just life in general in the Black neighborhoods of LA in the mid-1960s. One theme running through the entire book is that Easy really just wants to do his job as chief of maintenance at Sojourner Truth High School, but he keeps getting pulled back onto the street to do investigations – usually when someone, a friend or acquaintance, asks him to do so as a favor.
“Smoke” centers around a case of arson committed on the school grounds. A gas can firebomb was placed and set to go off under the metal shop building, which was a separate shed on campus. No one was injured, even though it burned to the ground. One of the younger students tells Easy he saw a former student, a drop-out, and some white guy he didn’t recognize walking through campus with a gas can early in the morning. Easy hits the streets to find out who set the fire and, more importantly, why.
“Crimson Stain” has a plot point that carries over from the preceding story, as Easy tries to track down a former prostitute who has some information he really needs. He visits her former brothel, where he learns that she’s gone straight (possibly for a man) and even found a ‘normal’ job at an aircraft factory. Once he tracks her down, he finds her dead with a stab wound in her chest – and there are several likely suspects.
“Silver Lining” reintroduces two characters from the earlier books, Mofass, Easy’s aging former business associate, and his girlfriend Jewelle, who is having a tangle of family troubles. She believes her younger sister – who fled an abusive boyfriend in Texas – is being held against her will by her resentful older sister and ne’er do well brothers, who seem to be using her as leverage to get Jewelle to sign over ownership of the successful real estate business she runs with Mofass. She wants Easy to help get her younger sister out of their clutches, but when Easy does so, he finds that the situation is even more complicated than it seems.
“Lavender” starts with Easy getting a call from EttaMae, the former wife of his friend Mouse, after not hearing from her for almost a year. She wants him to find a young man named Willis Longtree, who ran off with the flirty, trouble-making daughter of the wealthy white family she’s working for (Willis, needless to say, is Black), Her father already has a man on their trail who will most likely kill Willis. At the same time, Easy is dealing with a serious problem in his home life.
“Gator Green” takes Easy to a large auto repair shop owned by a former Louisianan called ‘Gator’, where he takes a job (working the late shift so it doesn’t interfere with his day job) to find out anything he can about a robbery of the owner’s safe that is being blamed on a young man who formerly worked there named Henry. The latter’s in-law, Saul Lynx, a P.I., enlisted Easy’s help because he’s convinced the young man didn’t do it and wants to clear his name.
“Gray-Eyed Death” involves, well, lots of spoilers for previous Easy books (one in particular) – which I have been strenuously trying to avoid in these brief reviews. Suffice it to say, Easy is hit (virtually blind-sided) by several blasts from his past, including two characters last seen in the novella Gone Fishin’: Mama Jo, a spooky herbalist (Easy considers her a witch) of indeterminate age who lived in the middle of a south Texas swamp, and her misfit son Domaque (he’s incredibly intelligent, but child-like in many ways, and also rather homely and hunchbacked). Easy learns that they had both moved to Santa Barbara six years earlier, and now Domaque is hiding out from the cops because he’s been framed for an armored car robbery. So, as per usual, Easy starts conducting an investigation and devising a plan to get him out of trouble.
“Amber Gate” sees Easy taking on a case for a pair of shoes: a cobbler he knows named Theodore Steinman wants him to clear the name of a wealthy landlord who is suspected by the police of killing a young Black woman, and Easy agrees to look into it if Theodore makes him a pair of shoes. In this story in particular, Easy also does some soul searching about the way he lives his life, what he wants to do with it, and what kind of role model he is for his children.

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

There has rightfully been a lot written about the various genocides of the 20th Century.  But the genocides in Africa during the colonial period have long been largely forgotten.  If we want to understand Africa today and the problems still facing that continent we have to understand the past and particularly the colonial period and the "Scramble for Africa."  An estimated 10 to 15 million people were systematically killed in the Congo while it was ruled by Belgian King Leopold II from forced labor, massacres, famine, slavery and other effects of his repressive rule.  It was from this regime that American minister George Washington Williams first coined the term "Crimes Against Humanity."  

It always seemed odd that tiny Belgium, a very young state still in the 1880s, ended up with a huge colonial territory in Central Africa.  It really was through the force of Leopold's ambition and greed, because the Belgian parliament and people, at least early on, had little to no interest in colonialism.  The Congo Free State was a personal fiefdom and billions of dollars in ivory and then rubber profits funneled largely into the personal pockets of Leopold.  At the same time the native population of that area were forced to labor at risk of beatings, having their hands cut off and death.  Villages were razed.  Women were raped and sold in to sex slavery.  It's very clear that the name Leopold II deserves to be mentioned along with Mao, Stalin and Hitler.  

Along the way there are heroes.  George Washington Williams, a black American minister, lawyer and journalist who was one of the first to ring the bell on the atrocities in the Congo Free State.  E. D. Morel, a British journalist who started the  Congo Reform Association, the first mass human rights organization.  British Consul Roger Casement who investigated abuses there and acted as a whistleblower.  

Hochschild gives us the history of Leopold's regime, the backlash and a look at how long it took even after the region was taken over by the Belgian government for any change to actually happen.  He also gives us a short look at the extremely troubled history of the Congo since that time, much of it still exacerbated by western meddling (the assassination of Patrice Lumumba with U.S. and British involvement), the continued propping up of the despotic regime of Mobutu Sese Seko.  And he questions how many millions of others died at the hands of other colonizers, the British, the French and the Germans who weren't subject to the scrutiny that Leopold received.  

An excellent look at a long forgotten tragedy.  

The cobra dance from Robert E. Howard's Shadows in Zamboula was lifted from Talbot Mundy's King of the Khyber Rifles!

But then the scene got the desired result: get the cover spot for its publications in Weird Tales. It wouldn't be the only time Howard would do that!

I have several Star Trek novels from the 70's - a novelization of The Trouble with Tribbles plus a few 70's novels with new adventures with the original cast. I plan to read them in early 2023. First I want to finish the Han Solo Adventures trilogy by Brian Daley (I love those novels) plus I plan to get a Superman novel - Superman, Last Son of Krypton by Elliot Maggin, before I jump into those Star Trek novels. I'm looking forward to them, though I probably shouldn't get my hopes up too much. 

I thought about you when I was reading those sections.  I'd honestly love to get your take on the book.