Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Ellis Mosley (1952- ) - 1990

Devil in a Blue Dress 219 pages. A Red Death 284 pages. White Butterfly 272 pages. Octavos (8 1/2" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's quarter cloth with lettering to spines over boards in original pictorial jackets. Signed and inscribed copies. First edition. The first three novels in the Easy Rawlins series all signed or inscirbed. Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins is a fictional character created by mystery author Walter Mosley. Rawlins is an African-American private investigator, a hard-boiled detective and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. He is featured in a series of best-selling mysteries set from the 1940s to the 1960s. The mysteries combine traditional conventions of detective fiction with descriptions of racial inequities and social injustice experienced by African Americans and other persons of color in the Los Angeles of that period and the present. While Rawlins is clearly in the tradition of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer, he differs sharply from these earlier fictional detectives in that Rawlins is an unlicensed private investigator (though he acquires a license late in the series) with no background or training in law enforcement. Condition: Signed or inscribed on titles. Remainder mark at heal end pages to Devil in a Blue Dress else near fine in like jackets.