Fearless Jones

Walter Mosley


"Hampton had a sharp laugh, like the chatter of a dozen angry wrens." ---Walter Mosley writing in Fear Itself.


I find myself compelled to re-read all of Walter Mosley's books. It's that time of year when a gal wants nothing new but the old favorites. There's a new Fearless Jones novel out--Fear of the Dark. Paris Minton is back, of course and has somehow gotten himself involved in another big mess. This one, like the others, starts with a knock on the door to his used bookshop. Paris makes the mistake of answering the door, and there stands Fearless Jones. Paris and Fearless are the perfect counterbalances to each other. Paris is an intellectual, timid and forever attempting to be logical. Often his intellectual skills are crucial to figuring out the twists and turns in the endless and horrifiy adventures that take him and Fearless into the disturbing and violent places of L.A. in the fifties. Fearless is, well, fearless. He intuits people and exerts his homegrown moral system in situations that seem to defy order and integrity. But if you make a wrong move, he'll beat you to a pulp in a hearbeat. Fearless and Paris take care of one another and once in a while they both take care of other people who wander in and out of the bizarre and shady situations that build in complexity throughout the series. Paris and Fearless are two Black men in L.A. in the fifties and this determines to some degree who they are, and to a larger degree the framework within which they have to work things out. The first in the series is Fearless Jones, followed by Fear Itself, and the latest --Fear of the Dark.