Some debuts announce a career; this one announced a movement. When W. W. Norton published Walter Mosley’s first novel in 1990, the American crime tradition had been waiting decades for the book without knowing it. Easy Rawlins — Black, broke, recently fired, in possession of a small house he cannot afford to lose — walks into a job offered by a man named DeWitt Albright, and walks the reader into a Los Angeles that the genre’s white masters had been writing around for half a century.
The Norton first edition is the artifact of that arrival. The jacket photography, the typesetting, the period-appropriate trim — all of it speaks to the moment Mosley landed: a literary debut from a press not normally associated with genre fiction, presented seriously, given its full weight. This copy retains the dust jacket in near-fine condition with the original $18.95 price unclipped. For collectors of postwar African American literature, of the modern detective novel, or of significant American debuts, the 1990 Norton first is the place to begin.
Condition: Fine in near-fine dust jacket. Boards tight and square, no shelf wear. Dust jacket clean and unclipped — original $18.95 price retained. Interior clean and unmarked; no inscriptions or bookplates. Stated First Edition with full number line to 1. ISBN 0-393-02854-2.
Some debuts announce a career; this one announced a movement. When W. W. Norton published Walter Mosley’s first novel in 1990, the American crime tradition had been waiting decades for the book without knowing it. Easy Rawlins — Black, broke, recently fired, in possession of a small house he cannot afford to lose — walks into a job offered by a man named DeWitt Albright, and walks the reader into a Los Angeles that the genre’s white masters had been writing around for half a century.
The Norton first edition is the artifact of that arrival. The jacket photography, the typesetting, the period-appropriate trim — all of it speaks to the moment Mosley landed: a literary debut from a press not normally associated with genre fiction, presented seriously, given its full weight. This copy retains the dust jacket in near-fine condition with the original $18.95 price unclipped. For collectors of postwar African American literature, of the modern detective novel, or of significant American debuts, the 1990 Norton first is the place to begin.
Condition: Fine in near-fine dust jacket. Boards tight and square, no shelf wear. Dust jacket clean and unclipped — original $18.95 price retained. Interior clean and unmarked; no inscriptions or bookplates. Stated First Edition with full number line to 1. ISBN 0-393-02854-2.
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