Spoiler Alert, maybe.
This book holds together better than the previous book. I'm glad I read it. Paris shows some growth/change. Still the stereotypes wear you down. I wonder if Mosley had a whole plot in his head, with a vision of what the future will be, of where Paris is now. I don't know if the first book sets the current time.

Paris Minton is an interesting guy and one after my own heart: he owns a bookstore. This doesn't stop him from getting into troubles when his cousin, Ulysses "Useless" Grant, IV shows up at his door asking for help then disappears again ... on the heels of Paris' cousin comes Ulysses' mother Three Hearts (that's what her name sounds like to me), who is a force to be reckoned with in her own right [she carries a .44 in her purse]. Throw in blackmail money, crooked cops, Paris' friend Fearless Jones, and a lot of running around and you have a pretty good book worth listening to. ( )

This was my first book from Walter Moseley’s "Fearless Jones" series. The main character – the narrator—is Paris Minton, a skinny and somewhat cowardly owner of a bookstore. Fearless Jones is everything Paris is not – handsome, strong, and brave, and a success with the ladies. The setting is the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in the 1950s, and the overtones of racial disharmony permeate the story.

Auntie Three-Hearts (who nearly raised Paris) arrives by bus from Louisiana, and asks Paris to help find her son Ulysses (a.k.a., “Useless”), a small-time crook. Ulysses is Paris’ cousin, but he would rather not have anything to do with him – in their last encounter, Ulysses stashed a bag of stolen jewelry in Paris’ shop, and Paris managed to get rid of it just before the cops arrived. However, Paris agrees to search for Useless, and recruits Fearless, plus a bail bondman (Milo), and a PI named Whisper. The search involves treks through the dregs of society, and beatings, murder, blackmail and trouble with the police are all involved.

There’s a strong element of Raymond Chandler in Moseley’s fiction, but the racial undercurrents are all Moseley’s, reflecting the author's own ethnicity (he identifies as black and Jewish). The story is interesting and imaginative, with flashes of inspired dialogue and unexpected plot elements. On the down side, I did find it hard to keep track of the numerous secondary characters, but taking notes on them was a help. ( )

This is the third (and last so far?) of Mosley's Fearless Jones novels. I took up Fearless Jones this summer as a break from Easy Rawlins, whose series I had apparently finished up last summer.

I think reading three such books in a short period of time wears thin. The schtick gets old. Still, the book posed an interesting problem. The crimes involved, in part, white victims. But the black victims would get no justice were the police called in. So Paris and Fearless had to work through things on their own. They tracked down all the bad guys, most of whom ended up being killed, for the most part by each other. The restitution, such as it was, was done through the intermediary of one of the white victims, one who had treated Paris and Fearless as regular human beings upon first meeting them.

As I've said before, I wish I could give plusses and minuses to ratings. This would garner a 4*- or a 3*+ rating, most likely. I was originally inclined to give it merely 3*s, but figured that might be a bit on the harsh side. It is a well-written, readable book, which illuminates a culture foreign to most of us, to our shame. ( )

till working my way through a large pile of Mosley's that I inherited. I read one every few months and am always pleasantly surprised by the continuing excellence of his writing. To me, his strength lies in his characterisation and that is particularly true of this book. Very enjoyable! ( )