Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley is included among The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, albeit on The Greatest Books of All Time you only meet it at 1296, it is nonetheless ranked 92nd on the Mystery Writers Association’s Top 100 Best Crime Novels page- by the way, if you read this and then want some more, you have more than six thousand reviews of magnum opera from the GOAT and other sites, together with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley is included among The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, albeit on The Greatest Books of All Time you only meet it at 1296, it is nonetheless ranked 92^nd on the Mystery Writers Association’s Top 100 Best Crime Novels page- by the way, if you read this and then want some more, you have more than six thousand reviews of magnum opera from the GOAT and other sites, together with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

 

8 out of 10

 

Perhaps the best advantage of reading this (actually, it was somebody else doing it and I just listened, and a good actor makes all the difference) was that I stayed with it, somehow, I lose interest, find that I think of something else, even with magnum opera like Walt Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, or the new hit Hamnet

 

Here are the conditions of Flow https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/flow-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi.html as identified by the author of the psychology classic…Flow: you are in control, here are clear goals, feedback is instant, time changes, but from here on, I miss the checks on the following aspects

 

It is an autotelic experience, one is between burnout and boredom, out of the comfort zone, nothing else matters, or for some books (many of them sadly) I find that the joie de vivre is, if not missing, then less than expected, I get distracted, instead of being focused, with formidable concentration, and time flows, but it may be wasted

Devil in a Blue Dress at least kept me following, even when I was tempted to say like Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-kings-english-guide-to-modern-usage.html - ‘I feel as I do with Virginia Woolf I want to keep saying 'No, he didn't', No it didn't happen as you describe it', No, that isn't what he thought, No, that's just what she didn't say’ some of the plot seemed far fetched

 

Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins is the hero of the story, a black man from Texas, who has moved to Los Angeles, where he gets into trouble, though I do not get why Daphne Monet would be the Devil in a Blue Dress from the title, I mean, yes, I see that people die around her, but the devil, really, it looks a bit too much for me

Easy has lost his job and he is tempted to accept this job offer, to find information about the white woman, Daphne Monet, that had gone missing, later we see that she had stolen $ 30,000 – which today might approach half a million – and abandoned the rich, connected white man, who wants her back, hired DeWitt Albright, who in his turn pays Easy to get to the Devil in a Blue Dress and take the money from her

 

Men and women start dying, the police take the hero into custody, question and bully him, accusing the innocent man of committing murder and other crimes, only they cannot prove anything – Ezekiel Rawlins has been fighting in the war, this is 1948 when the narrative takes place, and has been a victim of racism and trauma

 In fact, Daphne Monet is more of a victim than the ‘Devil’, now that I think about this, maybe the title has another meaning, they just accuse her of different things, from the theft to the murders, but she was in fact abused by her father – maybe a spoiler alert was needed, but I always say this is quite preposterous

 

Spoiler alerts indicate that I believe someone is following all this, reading all the way, through the first and next lines to the end, and I need to tell them they should leave before I spoil it, who reads all this way, or anything for that matter…on the other hand, we have this actor at the club downtown, who disliked the Palme d’Or Winner of 2025, It Was Just an Accident, and Sirat, and went on about what was happening in the films…while I screamed that I do not want to know, I like to have the surprise of the end, like in House of Dynamite

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’