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Title: The Bottom of the Pile of Mosley Books
Review: Fans of Mosley will buy this prequel to the Easy Rawlins / Mouse Alexander stories to find out how their anti-heroes were `made'. This book is liable to disappoint, however. The setting is rural South, not 5th Ward Houston, and the young men seem more chaotic than inchoate. Mouse, however, remains his murderous loyal self and drives the action.Mosley's difficulty lies in portraying the secondary characters of this novel. They fall largely in three buckets - old-style holy roller good, blood evil, and grotesque. The stereotyping of rural blacks is blatant enough that Mosley seems to uphold the prejudices of 1920's redneck bigots. Fortunately he redeems this broad brush on several occasions with jewels of description and language, and a few twists of sympathy for his characters.Not a best effort - worth reading out of the library, but not buying.
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