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In the history of detective fiction, there may never have been a pair quite as dissimilar as Paris Minton, owner of the Florence Avenue Used Book Shop, and Fearless Jones, former U.S. Army assassin and one of the toughest men in black Los Angeles in the years after World War II.
Paris is not just bookish and intellectual, but is a self-confessed coward. Everything fills him with dread. Fearless is, well, fearless. He might be a killer, but he is also "pure of heart" and honest. Fearless always tries to do the right thing, but he is not a fellow you want to get on the wrong side of.
But they say that opposites attract, and the improbable and loyal friendship between the two men works perfectly in the third book in this series, FEAR OF THE DARK.
Since arriving on the literary scene in the early 1990s, Walter Mosley quickly established himself as one of our best mystery authors with the Easy Rawlins books based on the black detective working the streets of L.A. Mosley has also distinguished himself with both non-mystery novels and nonfiction books.
The sun-drenched streets of L.A. have provided the perfect setting for noir since the days of Raymond Chandler in the 1940s. Easy Rawlins and now Paris Minton and Fearless Jones work those same mean streets. But they take us into parts of La-La land that Chandler's Marlowe could never easily go. They take us into the bars and pool halls and apartments of Watts, South Central and Compton. Mosley writes about the African American communities of L.A.
But as with Chandler before him, Mosley finds nothing but corruption, violence and loads of devils in the City of Angels. Paris is not much of a businessman, nor does he want to be. He is perfectly content to sit alone and read great books all day. But those familiar with this wonderful series already know that trouble comes for Paris with a knock at his front door.
This time the knock comes at 3:51 on an afternoon in 1956 and is delivered by his cousin, Ulysses S. Grant IV, in desperate need of help. A visit from Ulysses, not so affectionately called "Useless" by everybody who knows him, is not a good thing. Despite his possible presidential lineage, Useless is no good and brings everybody he is involved with bad luck. Paris tells us, "Useless was the kind of trouble that could get a man killed."
And that is indeed what happens to get this wonderful book off to a rollicking start. Paris is also at the time in the process of unsuccessfully trying to break up with a white woman whose rent he has been paying for a few weeks. He decides on the breakup after discovering that she has a jealous white boyfriend named "Tiny." That is probably always a good idea, but sure enough Tiny barges in to find Paris and his girlfriend in a compromising position on the floor of the bookstore. Paris literally flees for his life "with pants in one hand and drawers in the other."
When the coast is clear, he returns home only to find a very dead Tiny on his floor, shot in the head, and the girl missing. This is obviously a job for Fearless Jones, and Fearless comes to his cowardly friend's assistance no questioned asked, much as Paris has always done for him. But it also produces a hilarious scene where Paris has to be locked in a dark cellar with the body until the always-calm Fearless can return with a truck to dispose of it. Not exactly the best place for a man who is afraid of everything.
Of course, Tiny and the girl will eventually be linked to Useless. And pretty soon murder will be linked to blackmail schemes aimed at powerful white men. Paris will be drawn further in the mess with the arrival of Useless's mother, Three Hearts, from Louisiana. She possesses an "evil eye" that also scares the daylights out of Paris. Three Hearts thinks the world of her boy, as most mothers do. Paris has no choice but to honor her request to find Useless, and you better not call him that name around his Mama.
Mosley is brilliant in painting an atmospheric picture of 1950s L.A. that was never covered in the travel guides of the period. We follow Paris and Fearless to places like Jerry Twist's pool parlor. On the bottom floor of the lime-colored building housing Twist's is Ha Tsu's Good News Chinese restaurant, the only Chinese restaurant that employs a bouncer.
But as in a classic film noir, everything is just a little off-kilter to indicate that things are not quite what they seem to be on the surface. And Mosley is terrific at portraying the reality of being black in America in those now-often idealized "good old days" of the 1950s.
Paris and Fearless must solve the case themselves. For a black man to go to the police would simply give the cops a black man to unjustly pin the crimes on. "And there I was: one kind of man in another kind of world," Paris says at one point. When a police car stops Paris and Fearless in the middle of the night in a neighborhood not their own (read white), they must spend the night in jail even though they did nothing wrong. At another point Paris is harassed by the police for the simple act of sitting alone on a park bench reading a book.
Fearless puts it into perspective for Paris. "They stopped us 'cause they scared. An' if they ain't scared, the people pay 'em is. That's the on'y reason they want to keep you from readin' yo' book. That's the on'y reason they ask that white man were we botherin' him. They wanna keep on our ass 'cause if they don't, they worried we might start fightin' back."
Paris Minton and Fearless Jones are characters you will enjoy spending time with. Walter Mosley has done it again. He has written a solid mystery, a fun story and a book that will also give you something to think about as you enjoy it. If you love a good mystery and a well-written novel, FEAR OF THE DARK is the book for you.
--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan
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