White Butterfly by Walter Mosley

First published: 1992

Type of plot: Detective and mystery

Time of work: 1956

Locale: Los Angeles, California

Principal Characters:

• Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, a clandestine property owner and part-time detective
• Regina Rawlins, Easy’s wife, a nurse who is troubled by Easy’s apparently ill-gotten wealth
• Edna, the Rawlins’ infant daughter
• Jesus, Easy’s adopted son, a Mexican American rescued by Easy in an earlier novel
• Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, Easy’s best but most dangerous friend
• Quinten Naylor, the black policeman who originally tries to get Easy involved with the investigation
• Mofass, the front man for Easy’s business operations
• Robin Garnett, the first white victim in the series of murders Easy is asked to investigate

The Novel

White Butterfly takes place in 1956. Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, the hero of Walter Mosley’s previous two detective novels, is now married to a beautiful black nurse named Regina. Easy and Regina are rearing two children, their infant daughter, Edna, and Jesus, a young Mexican American boy rescued by Easy in an earlier adventure. This life is not idyllic, however. Easy has not told Regina about his secret business holdings or the detective work he does on the side for friends and the police. There are also other instances of miscommunication between the two that cloud the future of their marriage.

The situation worsens when Easy is approached first by black policeman Quinten Naylor and then by a slew of high city officials for help in tracing a serial murderer loose in Watts. This final burst of attention is brought about by the first white victim, Robin Garnett. Up until this time, the victims had been black prostitutes and exotic dancers. The white victim, however, was a college student from a respectable family. Like the other victims, her body was partly burned and mutilated. Easy resents the sudden concern of the white officials, apathetic when the victims were black. He is nevertheless coerced into helping when the police threaten to pin the crimes on Easy’s best friend, Mouse.

Easy goes to work, frequenting bars and asking questions that lead him to a suspect and to a disturbing revelation. The white coed led a double life, coming down to Watts to work as a stripper/prostitute known as “the White Butterfly.” When Easy reports this to the police, he is told to abandon this line of inquiry, partly because the girl’s father is a former district attorney. Curiosity gets the better of Easy, and he goes to speak to the girl’s mother, who is understandably upset. The police chastise Easy and penalize him by arresting Mouse. Easy talks the police into releasing Mouse, and the two of them track the suspect, a black man, to San Francisco. They locate him just in time to witness his death in a bar fight, one set up by the local police. They also learn that San Francisco has had a chain of similar serial murders about which the black population was never informed. The suspect’s death becomes the final step in a scandalous coverup.

Frustrated, Easy returns to Los Angeles, where he learns that Robin Garnett supposedly had a baby. When he attempts to put the girl’s parents in touch with the woman keeping the baby, he is arrested for extortion. Easy reveals that Robin was killed by her father, Vernor Garnett, in order to avoid embarrassment over his daughter’s conduct. Garnett’s connections to law enforcement officials had given him knowledge of the serial murders, and he had tried to pass his daughter’s murder off as another in the series.

Amid all this, Easy decides to be more open with Regina, but it is too late. Regina has run off with another man, taking Edna with her. Easy is left heartbroken, turning to the bottle until Mouse and Jesus bring him back from the brink of self-destruction.

A side plot involves Mofass, the man who manages Easy’s business holdings. Mofass gets himself into trouble with white developers from whom he received a bribe. Although Easy will not bail Mofass out of trouble, the two work together to get the upper hand over the white businessmen. Although Easy’s marriage fails, he is able to solidify his finances and, therefore, his independence.

The Characters

Easy Rawlins is in many ways the typical private investigator of hard-boiled detective fiction. He works essentially for his own ends and is a free agent. He has a strong desire to uncover truth, even if he is the only one who ever possesses it, and to bring about justice, even when it is inconsistent with the law. A healthy dose of compassion, as exhibited by his love for his adopted son, Jesus, makes Easy a particularly well-drawn model of the hard-boiled detective as pioneered by major figures such as Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, and Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer. In short, Easy is a crusader for justice and truth in an unjust and illusory world.

Easy is not flawless. He drinks too much and is susceptible to certain male impulses. Easy is also complex. His character combines cynicism, based on his knowledge of the ways of the world, with idealism, based on his belief in a better world with which his conduct is in accord. Easy’s racial identity is also crucial to understanding his character. Whereas other private eyes are alienated philosophically from an unjust world, Easy himself is a member of an oppressed race. Part of the challenge he faces involves dealing with white powerholders from a position of socially imposed inferiority. Easy manages to triumph despite this obstacle, solving mysteries and keeping the authorities off his back. He also struggles to keep an even keel in his personal life.

Mouse represents a different model of accommodation to American racism. Put simply, Mouse is a killer. Easy, too, could kill when he served in the armed forces during World War II, but he has scruples and hesitates to use violence. Mouse has a hair-trigger personality, particularly when he perceives a threat to his manhood. As such, he is adept at dealing with the heavy-handed white developers in White Butterfly. In the two previous Easy Rawlins novels, it was Mouse who killed the primary villain, in the nick of time to save Easy. This suggests a complementary relationship between Easy and Mouse. Without Easy, Mouse’s violence would be random and ultimately self-destructive; without Mouse, Easy would have been dead well before the events in White Butterfly ever took place.

Quinten Naylor represents a third model of accommodation to racial inequality and injustice. Educated and decidedly “East Coast” in his demeanor, Naylor deals with the racial obstacles facing him by achieving a position of authority. Unlike Easy, Naylor has to stay within the law, even when the law is unjust. On the other hand, Naylor is treated as an equal by most of his fellow police detectives and, within certain narrow limits, is able to reduce the severity of police brutality and other injustices suffered disproportionately by African Americans. Naylor works from within the system to make small but significant dents in American racism.

Mofass, Easy’s front man, is consumed by greed. His response to racial subordination is to use his wits to accumulate wealth through any means available. Unfortunately, Mofass somehow always manages to outsmart himself, suggesting that greed is ultimately self-destructive.

Regina, Easy’s wife, plays a small but important role in the novel. Because of the inner turmoil experienced by Easy as he deals with racial oppression, he finds it difficult to open up to Regina. They miscommunicate in tragic ways and ultimately break up. Although the theme is not overtly elaborated, Easy’s marriage to Regina is a hidden casualty of racism, as is the general relationship between black men and women in American literature and life.

Robin and Vernor Garnett are also, in a manner of speaking, victims of racism. Robin is drawn to Watts by the forbidden fruit of black sexuality. Vernor Garnett is driven to murder by the disgrace of interracial relationships even as recently as the 1950’s.

Critical Context

White Butterfly is Walter Mosley’s third novel, following Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) and A Red Death (1991). All three books feature Easy Rawlins and Mouse, and all three have been commercially and critically successful. Part of Mosley’s success can be attributed to the existence of a ready market for variations within the hard-boiled detective genre.

This genre is associated most often with early pioneers Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald, but by the time Mosley started writing there were dozens of successful authors working within the genre. In addition, the previously white, male realm of the private investigator had given way to a diverse group, including a number of female detectives as well as an occasional African American, such as Jackson F. Burke’s Sam Kelly, Ken Davis’s Carver Bascombe, and Ed Lacy’s Toussaint Moore.

Mosley has established himself as something more than a detective writer, however. He has used the form of the traditional hard-boiled detective story to explore important racial themes. Mosley has notable predecessors in this respect. Hammett explored the issue of race briefly in his short story “Nightshade” (anthologized in 1944), and Harry Whittingham’s 1961 novel Journey into Violence explores southern racism in a political context. Mosley’s closest precursor is Chester Himes. Himes’s first novel, If He Hollers, Let Him Go, takes place in Los Angeles and uses a hard-boiled prose style to explore the issues of racial justice and black alienation. Himes’s novel ends with the main character, Bob Jones, about to enter the Army in 1943; Mosley’s Easy Rawlins starts his tales just after serving in the war.

Bibliography

Geherin, David. The American Private Eye: The Image in Fiction. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1985. Geherin examines some of the more prominent fictional private eyes, discussing development and common attributes. Features a chapter on the “compassionate” private eyes, among whom Easy Rawlins would certainly be numbered.

Hitchens, Christopher. “The Tribes of Walter Mosley.” Vanity Fair 56 (February, 1993): 46-50. Using the favorable comments of newly elected president Bill Clinton as a springboard, this interview features Mosley’s assessment of his mixed (black and Jewish) cultural roots.

Hughes, Carl M. The Negro Novelist: A Discussion of the Writings of American Negro Novelists, 1940-1950. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1967. Looking at authors such as Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, and Richard Wright, this book reveals deep-seated themes explored by an earlier generation of pioneering black writers. Despite Mosley’s identity as a detective novelist, his work clearly harks back to these themes.

Lomax, Sara M. “Double Agent Easy Rawlins: The Development of a Cultural Detective.” American Visions 7 (April/May, 1992): 32-34. Provides some details on Mosley’s life and career. Also makes a preliminary attempt to fit his work into the tradition of black literature.

Mason, Theodore O., Jr. “Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins: The Detective and Afro-American Fiction.” Kenyon Review 14 (Fall, 1992): 173-183. Discusses Mosley’s first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, in the light of the African American novelistic tradition. Cites several modern critics as providing a solid foundation for reading Mosley’s and other African American detective fiction.

Mosley, Walter. “A Message Louder than a Billion Pleas.” Los Angeles Times, May 5, 1992, p. B7. In this brief commentary article, Mosley discusses the Rodney King episode and subsequent uprising in Watts. Mosley asks readers to consider the videotape excerpts of King’s beating by police in the light of the oral history of black Americans. Mosley’s projected series of novels will look specifically at the Watts riots of the 1960’s and 1990’s.

Puckrein, Gary A. Review of White Butterfly. American Visions 8 (February/March, 1993): 34. A favorable review of Mosley’s novel. Puckrein notes that “cleverly woven throughout the story is a discussion of black male/female relations, a topic that too few black male novelists explore in any depth.”

Williams, John. Review of White Butterfly. New Statesman and Society 6 (September 3, 1993): 41. Criticizes the plot as “functional and little more,” but praises the novel for “a powerful, if not always likeable, new installment in the most impressive series of crime novels since Ross McDonald.”

Young, Mary. “Walter Mosely, Detective Fiction and Black Culture.” Journal of Popular Culture 32 (Summer, 1998): 141. Focuses on the characters of Easy Rawlins and “Mouse” Navrochet. Young argues that Mosley created two heroic characters based on traditional black culture because he wished to adapt the genre of detective novels to continue African American cultural traditions.