SOURCE: Adler, Dick. “Easy Rawlins: Color Him Older, Wiser and in Trouble Again.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (14 July 1996): 2.

In the following review of A Little Yellow Dog, Adler asserts that the strength of Mosley's Easy Rawlins novels lies in their depiction of the African American community in post-World War II Los Angeles.

Of all the many fine things in the five mystery novels that Walter Mosley has written featuring Easy Rawlins—the richness and depth of the characters, the constantly tightening fist of the stories, the way the violence and death are so surprising and so inevitable—the one that really puts the glow of greatness on the series and makes it unique is the way Mosley has rooted his books in the landowning dream of Los Angeles.

“When I was a poor man, and landless, all I worried about was a place for the night and...