Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery Audiobook (Free)

When Walter Mosley burst onto the literary picture in 1990 with his first Easy Rawlins secret, Devil in a Blue Dress-a combustible mixture of Raymond Chandler and Richard Wright-he captured the attention of thousands of readers (including future chief executive Bill Clinton). Eleven books later on, Easy Rawlins is among the few private eyes in contemporary crime fiction who could be called iconic and immortal. In the incendiary and fast-paced Small Green, he profits in the brink of death to about Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery investigate the dark aspect of L.A.’s 1960s hippie haven, the Sunset Strip.

We last saw Easy in 2007’s Blonde Beliefs, fighting for his existence after his car plunges more than a cliff. Accurate to form, the difficult WWII veteran survives, and shortly his murderous sidekick Mouse provides him back again cruising the mean roads of L.A., in all their psychedelic 1967 glory, to look for a young dark man, Evander “Little Green” Noon, who vanished during an acidity trip. Fueled by an elixir known as Gator’s Bloodstream, brewed by the conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual, and psychological resurrection, but tranquility and love soon give way to murder and mayhem. Written with Mosley’s signature grit and panache, this engrossing and atmospheric mystery is not only a trip back in time, it is also a tough-minded exploration of good and bad, and of the power of guilt and redemption. Once more, Easy asserts his reign over the town of (Fallen) Angels.