Where has Walter Mosley been, lo these past few years? He certainly has not been forgotten and he hasn't been gone by any means, either, but the sad truth of it is that he hasn't written any mysteries since Easy Rawlins's appearance in A LITTLE YELLOW DOG in 1996. Mosley has tried his hand at science fiction and at more "mainstream" fiction, if you will, and has proven himself as capable at both as he is when working in the thriller genre. With FEARLESS JONES, Mosley has confounded expectations once again by returning to mysteries, though not to the world of Easy Rawlins.

FEARLESS JONES is set in early 1950s Los Angeles, a city whose black and white citizens rub shoulders uneasily and, by legalistic fiat, only occasionally. Paris Minton is a rarity, a black entrepreneur running a small but successful used bookstore in Watts, and he is used to interesting effect here. One of the elements of Mosley's writing that has made him such a favorite of readers is his inclination to test and stretch literary limits, coupled with his ability to be quite adept at doing so. This quality is thoroughly demonstrated in FEARLESS JONES. While Jones is ostensibly the hero of the piece, the story is narrated by Minton, Jones's friend and occasionally reluctant sidekick. This type of writing, where the action of the piece is described in the first person by a supposedly secondary character --- think Dr. Watson narrating the Sherlock Holmes stories --- is not easy to do. The author risks losing focus of the story as well as the interest of the reader if the narrator overwhelms the character described; yet if he does too good a job of focusing on the protagonist, the narrator's presence becomes superficial. Mosley quite deftly deals with this problem by focusing on Minton and Jones as a team, whose relative strengths and weaknesses compliment and balance each other. Minton is more cerebral than the streetwise Jones; thus when, but a few pages into FEARLESS JONES, Minton is confronted with a thug, he tries to talk his way out of the situation, only to be summarily pimp-slapped into unconsciousness. When Jones later confronts the guy, he summarily lays the bully out for the count. Yet it is Minton, ultimately, who figures out the labyrinthine mystery that is presented so well in FEARLESS JONES.

Minton's knuckledusting comes as the result of his chivalrous attempt to rescue Elana Love, who has rushed into Minton's used bookstore with her angry boyfriend in hot pursuit. Love is looking for a church and, more specifically, a minister of the church that used to be in the neighborhood, and her boyfriend is looking for her. Minton's attempts to assist the lady, besides getting him summarily beaten, also get him chased and shot at. Even a night of lovemaking with Elana Love is a two-edged sword; he awakens to find that he has been robbed and that his bookstore has been burned to the ground. Jones, a hero of World War II, has demonstrated to Minton on many occasions that he has the bravery to deal with any situation and the chops to back it up. Thus, Minton, fearing that the next 12 hours of his life will be as bad as the previous 12, bails his friend Fearless Jones out of jail. The men quickly discover that Love, for all her talent and charms, is of only secondary interest to her pursuer. Love holds a German bond that is worth more money than any of the principals involved could ever reasonably hope to acquire in a lifetime. The bond, of course, is not hers; the people attempting to acquire it from her, and the true owner of the bond, are elements that make FEARLESS JONES a welcome return for Mosley to the mystery racks. Mosley, despite his extended absence from writing mysteries, shows no rust at all, deftly leading his reader through a tight plot to a convincing and, incidentally, satisfying ending.

Mosley introduces enough secondary characters and loose ends in FEARLESS JONES to indicate that he might be returning to the environs of 1950s L.A. in the near future. And who knows? Perhaps the future portends a meeting between Rawlins and Jones. We can only hope.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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