In a review by Ed Guerro he stated, “The routine insults and violence the police inflict on Rawlins, including a cop punching him during interrogation, is directed by Franklin with a world-weary sense of realism. It was during this interrogation that Easy experienced insults and beatings to try and get information or a confession from him. In the movie, Easy was taken in for questioning when, after a women he had questioned and stayed with the night before was found beaten to death. This scene has been commonly played out in the news and media and is still present in today’s society. When looking at the first racial motif, authoritarian racism, the interrogation scene was very powerful. And leave the reader with a stark reality of racial injustices to ponder. They write the clues on how society works or how it doesn’t work. Many writers don’t look at racial issues as problems to resolve. A broad audience gives the mystery writer a chance to address social issues like race, not just preach to the converted.” Today’s crime writers, black and white alike, are tackling the subject of race and that is definitely lacking in mainstream fiction and movies.

Mosley says, “When people like my books, they say I transcended the genre. With Devil in a Blue Dress, the first of six Easy Rawlins mysteries he showed the history of black life in Los Angeles from the perspective of the 40’s to the 60’s and can be easily paralleled to the 90’s. The movie, adapted from the book written by Walter Mosley, began the trend of using race and racial issues as a theme. Although Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), directed by Carl Franklin and starring Denzel Washington and Jennifer Beals, is clearly a film noir with all the entertainment appeals of that genre, mystery, murder, and suspense, the film goes beyond that genre appeals and reveals certain contemporary social implication, in particular, that the film is as much about the relations of blacks and whites in the 90’s as in the 40’s, the time in which the film is set and an understanding of this racial motif, especially as it deals with White police power and corruption over Blacks, the Black image of the Americanĭream, and miscegenationinterracial dating give a fillip understanding and appreciation of the film.

The devil in a blue dress summary