48 pages • 1 hour read
Walter MosleyDevil In A Blue Dress
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
One day in 1948 Los Angeles (LA), California, the narrator, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, a Black man in his late twenties, visits a bar run by his friend, Joppy Shag. Easy is surprised to see a white man in light clothing enter the bar. Joppy introduces the man, Dewitt Albright, as a friend of his, though Easy senses that Joppy is afraid of Albright.
Albright expresses his dislike for big companies and predatory banks, then offers a job to Easy, who recently lost his job at an aircraft manufacturing plant. When Easy asks about Albright’s work, Albright explains that he “does favors for friends, and for friends of friends” (5). Albright gives Easy an address and tells him to visit him there if he wants the job.
Chapter 2 Summary
Easy reviews Joppy’s backstory. A highly successful boxer in the 1930s, Joppy gave up boxing 10 years ago following the death of his uncle, a bartender. Joppy transported his uncle’s marble bar from Houston to LA to open his own bar, which is right above a butcher’s warehouse.
After Albright leaves, Easy asks Joppy about him. Joppy explains that he met Albright during his boxing days and describes him as a tough businessman who goes “wherever they’s a little money to be made” (8). Joppy encourages Easy to take the job so he can make his next mortgage payment. Easy states his misgivings, in part because Albright reminds him of Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, a man Easy knew when he lived in Houston, Texas, where he grew up. Like Albright, Mouse “always got his business in the front’a his mind, and if you get in the way you might come to no good” (10).
Chapter 3 Summary
Easy returns to his home, which he prizes highly. As he considers Albright’s offer, a “voice” in his head argues that he must take the job in order to keep the house.
Later that night, Easy goes to Albright’s address, located in downtown LA. Outside the building, he encounters a white man who mistakes Easy for a delivery person. The man refuses to let Easy enter without a written note from Albright but relents when Easy implies that Albright would be unhappy if he left. He leads Easy to a basement room containing Albright’s sidekicks, Manny and Shariff, who make sure that Easy is unarmed before they let him into the next room. There, Albright offers Easy a drink and tells him about the job, which involves finding Daphne Monet, an apparently white woman recently seen visiting Black jazz clubs in Watts, the neighborhood where Easy lives. Albright gives Easy a photograph of Daphne, as well as a partial payment in advance, and Easy agrees to look for her when Albright assures him that he means her no harm.
Albright recounts his past as a lawyer in Georgia, where he was more interested in bringing down powerful people than in helping his clients. He asks Easy whether he killed anyone during his time as a soldier in World War II. Seeing Easy’s discomfort, Albright says that “some of us can kill with no more trouble than drinking a glass of bourbon” (23).
Chapter 4 Summary
Following a tip from Albright, Easy visits an unlicensed nightclub called John’s place. On his way through the grocery market that serves as a front for the nightclub, Easy passes a drunk white man who offers him money to help him get in; Easy refuses. Before entering the club, he exchanges gossip with Hattie Parsons, who controls admissions. She tells him that Howard Green, a chauffeur who frequented John’s place, was beaten to death one night last week after leaving the nightclub.
Inside, Easy notices Frank Green, a gangster with a violent reputation. Easy chats with Hattie’s nephew, Junior Fornay, who serves as the club’s bouncer. Easy explains that he was fired from his job after refusing to work extra time at the end of a shift. Junior retells the story of Howard’s death, adding that Howard participated in something illegal for his employer, Matthew Teran, a powerful white man who recently withdrew from LA’s mayoral race. Easy and Junior recollect their time in Houston with Mouse, who once saved Easy from an attack by Junior.
Easy reflects on his relationship with Mouse, whose violent behavior troubles him. Several years ago, Mouse killed his own stepfather and pinned the murder on someone else. Four years ago in Houston, the last time Easy saw him, Mouse confided that he also killed his stepfather’s son when he came looking for Mouse the year before. Shaken, Easy left for LA that same day.
Easy tries to find out about Daphne from Junior, but Junior claims not to know anything.
Chapter 5 Summary
Easy sits next to Odell Jones, a quiet, religious man. After making small talk, Easy circulates through the bar looking for information about “a white girl, Delia, or Dahlia or something” (38), avoiding Daphne’s name out of caution. He fails to turn up any leads, and Frank leaves before Easy has a chance to talk to him.
Easy’s friend and co-worker, Dupree Bouchard, appears with his girlfriend, Coretta James, and they join Easy’s table. Dupree tells Easy that their boss wants him to return to work. They drink and talk until 3 AM, when Dupree passes out.
Chapter 6 Summary
Easy helps Coretta drag Dupree home and into her bed. Afterwards, they share a nightcap in the living room. Coretta flirts with Easy, saying that Dupree doesn’t satisfy her anymore. Easy begins to leave but stays when Coretta reveals that she met Daphne the week before. They have sex on the couch, and Coretta tells Easy that she saw Daphne with Frank Green.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
The novel’s opening scene in Joppy’s bar presents Easy at a turning point in his life while introducing key themes and characters. Easy’s first-person narration reveals a high degree of self-awareness and retrospective wisdom, as he tells the story from some future date with the benefit of hindsight. Easy as a narrator prefaces his first interaction with Albright with the reflection, “I should have gotten up and walked out of there” (5), adding a sense of foreboding and fatalism, typical elements of hardboiled and noir fiction. Mosley also sets up character motivations, including conflicting motivations. Albright is motivated primarily by money, and he deals with others on purely financial terms. Easy also values money highly, but he balances his desire for funds with concerns about safety and morality, as he only agrees to look for Daphne on the condition that no harm will come to her. Easy’s early misgivings set the stage for his later mixed feelings about violence and his violent friend, Mouse.
Mosley also draws attention to the way that race shapes Easy’s work as a detective in these chapters. Easy almost fails to get the job at all due to the prejudice and mistrust of the white man who only reluctantly lets him into the building housing Albright’s office. Additionally, much of Easy’s discomfort about the search for Daphne arises from his perception of her as an attractive white woman. At the time of the novel’s setting, racial segregation was the norm and interracial relationships were illegal in many states. California’s law against such marriages was struck down by the state’s supreme court in 1948, the same year that the events of this novel take place. However, the social stigma against such unions outlived the law. Easy thus finds his attraction to Daphne pitted against his desire to keep a low profile and avoid trouble.
Stylistically, these chapters offer striking, image-rich prose, setting an expressive tone for the novel. Of Joppy’s bar, Easy notes, “The dark cracks twisting through the light marble looked like a web of blood vessels in a newborn baby’s head” (8). Images like this one not only present apt visuals to readers evoking violence, precarity, and Easy’s apprehension, but also establish various subtle moods and effects, ranging from somber to comedic.
Related Titles
By Walter Mosley
