Mysterye Addict

Fearless Jones (book cover)

Style/genre: Hard-boiled
If you like this try…Raymond Chandler, Robert B. Parker, Dashiell Hammett
Rating:4 out of 5 fingerprints

“My used-book store had been open for just about a month when the police showed up….”

Paris Minton is an African-American bookstore owner in 1950s Los Angeles who prefers reading his wares to using his fists. When the lovely Elana Love wiggles into his store one day, inquiring about a storefront preacher named Reverend Jones, things go sour quickly. After a blissful night with Ms. Love, Paris awakens at a motel missing his car, his wallet, and Elana.

Paris and his best friend “Fearless” Jones must sort out the mess while ducking various street thugs in Watts, not to mention the LAPD, who would just as soon kill or arrest a black man back then as look at him. The two men intervene on behalf of an old Jewish man under deadly assault and are welcomed as temporary guardians to his family. Along the way they enlist the help of Milo Sweet, the local bondsman.

Mosley’s prose is as lean and muscular as the pork in the sandwiches Paris loads up on in a coffee shop while cracking the case:

Just then the young woman leaned forward and crumpled backward, into my arms. As I stood there holding her steady, the fear fled my heart. At close quarters her scent was floral but it was also sharp, like the smell after lightning strikes.

Occasionally Mosley  reminds you how exquisitely well-read Paris is, such as when he describes Loretta Kakuro, Milo’s lovely assistant, as a “Japanese passe-partout.”

Fearless, Paris’s best friend, is a WWII vet and the opposite of Paris–quick to use his fists, devastating to women, possessed of a sixth grade education but with the ability to read the the mysteries of human heart like a dime store comic book. Much of the pleasure of reading the Fearless Jones series comes from the rock-solid friendship that endures despite their differences.

Taut and suspenseful, this book is recommended reading.