Crime thriller evokes Hearst-SLA events
Print Edition
WALTER Mosley evokes the curious turns of the Patty Hearst kidnapping saga and the fractured culture of that era in “Rose Gold,” his latest Easy Rawlins crime thriller.
Rawlins, a black private investigator based in Los Angeles, follows leads from poor, simmering LA streets to secluded beachside mansions and laid-back hippie encampments. His search recalls a time when a California heiress like Hearst could be abducted by a band of oddball militants calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army.
The heiress whom Rawlins is hired to find is the “Rose Gold” of the title — Rosemary Goldsmith is her name — the daughter of a wealthy, secretive armaments magnate. The SLA-type cell that holds her is Scorched Earth, whom authorities view as a crime-prone revolutionary band created by a black former boxer.
There are many page-turning twists in Rawlins’ hunt for the poor little rich girl, and more than one mystery to be solved by the much-in-demand private detective. “Rose Gold,” the 13th entry in the Easy Rawlins series, is the second book finding him back in action after his apparent death in 2007’s “Blonde Faith,” which ended with him driving a car off a Pacific cliff.
Fans of Mosley’s private investigator were grateful Rawlins survived, and for good reason: Mosley’s writing gifts go well beyond the gumshoe genre. With Rawlins, he weaves in a tense racial element throughout, and raises the level of his achievement.
In “Rose Gold,” Rawlins may bump into police corruption, and his life is not without fine broads and bad apples. But Mosley’s characters invariably fill out a spectrum of skin shades and display a wide variety of human scruples.
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