Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Five Star) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

In this cycle of 14 bittersweet stories, Walter Mosley breaks out of the genre--if not the setting--of his bestselling Easy Rawlins detective novels. Only eight years after serving out a prison sentence for murder, Socrates Fortlow lives in a tiny, two-room Watts apartment, where he cooks on a hot plate, scavenges for bottles, drinks and wrestles with his demons. Struggling to control a seemingly boundless rage--as well as the power of his massive "rock-breaking" hands--Socrates must find a way to live an honourable life as a black man on the margins of a white world, a task which takes every ounce of self-control he has.

Easy Rawlins fans might initially find themselves disappointed by the absence of a mystery to unravel. But it's a gripping inner drama that unfolds over the pages of these stories, as Socrates comes to grips with the chaos, poverty and violence around him. He tries to get and keep a job delivering groceries; takes in a young street kid named Darryl, who has his own murder to hide; and helps drive out the neighbourhood crack dealer. Throughout, Mosley captures the rhythms of Watts life in prose both lyrical and hard-edged, resulting in a haunting look at a life bounded by lust, violence, fear and a ruthlessly unsentimental moral vision.

In this cycle of 14 bittersweet stories, Walter Mosley breaks out of the genre--if not the setting--of his bestselling Easy Rawlins detective novels. Only eight years after serving out a prison sentence for murder, Socrates Fortlow lives in a tiny, two-room Watts apartment, where he cooks on a hot plate, scavenges for bottles, drinks, and wrestles with his demons. Struggling to control a seemingly boundless rage--as well as the power of his massive "rock-breaking" hands--Socrates must find a way to live an honorable life as a black man on the margins of a white world, a task which takes every ounce of self-control he has.

Easy Rawlins fans might initially find themselves disappointed by the absence of a mystery to unravel. But it's a gripping inner drama that unfolds over the pages of these stories, as Socrates comes to grips with the chaos, poverty, and violence around him. He tries to get and keep a job delivering groceries; takes in a young street kid named Darryl, who has his own murder to hide; and helps drive out the neighborhood crack dealer. Throughout, Mosley captures the rhythms of Watts life in prose both musical and hard-edged, resulting in a haunting look at a life bounded by lust, violence, fear, and a ruthlessly unsentimental moral vision. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

In these interconnected short stories about an aging black man, Socrates Fortlow, living in a makeshift two-room apartment in an abandoned Watts building, Mosley turns on its head the fundamental fantasy of the detective story, the notion that a single individual can unlock a mystery whose solution will, temporarily, restore order to a chaotic world. Unlike Easy Rawlins, the hero of Mosley's own acclaimed detective series, Socrates lacks the wherewithal to solve mysteries, to move at least reasonably easily through various levels of society. Socrates is an ex-con, having served 27 years of hard time for a double murder. He lives precariously, delivering groceries and attempting to quell the demons that threaten to stir his "rock-breaking hands" to still more violence. And yet, despite all that, Socrates, too, restores temporary order in a chaotic world. His triumphs are small, attenuated things, but they are chiseled from the unyielding bedrock of despair that surrounds him: a few vials of morphine, acquired from a pusher, to ease the pain of his friend's prostate cancer; a momentary safe haven for a teenage boy, at risk from the local gangbangers. Every detective hero, even one as cut from real cloth as Easy Rawlins, is finally a fantasy figure, somebody with the answers we lack; Socrates Fortlow, "always outnumbered, always outgunned," is a fantasy-free hero. These are often difficult stories to read; never sentimental, they are finally, one and all, about pain and how we live with it. Perhaps that's why those brief moments when Socrates eases someone else's pain deliver such a powerful sense of catharsis. Hard-hitting, unrelenting, poignant short fiction. Bill Ott -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

Mosley takes a break from his peerless Easy Rawlins series (Gone Fishin', 1997, etc.) for a cycle of non-mystery stories set in the same violent neighborhood of Watts. Like Easy, Socrates Fortlow has lived a long time with the dark side of life and himself. Thirty-five years ago, Socrates, addled with drink and lust, raped and killed a pair of acquaintances. Now, eight years after his endless prison sentence, he's living in a two-room apartment little better than his cell, and he still watches his back, avoids the Man, and assigns himself a grade at the end of every day. ``Once you go to prison you belong there,'' he says of the brutalizing effect his term worked on him. But no matter how hard he tries, Socrates can't turn his back on life. A walk on the beach stirs memories and desires he'd rather not face; a tense face-off with a neighborhood adulterer awakens both his sharpest censure and his sharpest self-criticism. And he's not just a survivor; amid the allures of the flesh and the fear and anger he feels about being a black American, his life also lurches forward. He pushes the staff of the Bounty Supermarket to hire him as a grocery boxer; he takes in Darryl, a boy he can tell killed somebody else, too; he gets together with a WW II vet to expel a crack dealer from the neighborhood; he wrestles manfully with the question of whether he should rat a homicidal firebug out to the hated police. Whether he's remembering the bookstore intellectuals he used to hang around with or teaching Darryl to stand up to a gangbanger, Socrates constantly judges himself. As he writes to an old girlfriend: ``I don't get into trouble even when it's not my fault.'' The elemental recurrence of fear and lust and rage are right out of Easy Rawlins, even if Socrates' story exhibits rather than extends Mosley's range. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

Mosley introduces a new character, Socrates Fortlow, an ex-con trying to redeem his life, who "risks his safety to help a young boy struggling with his own conscience," and tries to provide a measure of mercy to an old friend dying of cancer.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

Meet Socrates Fortlow - a man who has spent twenty seven years inside and can kill a man with his bare hands. Now he has decided to do good, and help the oppressed of the Los Angeles ghetto. An intensely humane work from a major writer.

Introducing Socrates Fortlow...He's spent 27 years inside and can kill a man with his bare hands. But he has vowed to use his strength for good, to help the downtrodden and oppressed of the Los Angeles ghetto. His world is marked by deprivation and poverty but his struggle is heroic - to do right. Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned is an itensely humane work from a major writer at the height of his creative powers.

Walter Mosley is the author of over twenty critically acclaimed books and his work has been translated into twenty-one languages. His popular mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins began with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990, which was later made into a film starring Denzel Washington. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he now lives in New York.