Hard-boiled black easy: genre conventions in A Red Death

African American Review, Fall, 2004 by W. Russel Gray

What would a hard-boiled yarn be without a tough protagonist being leaned on, even beaten, by the powers that be? Easy Rawlins and Sam Spade represent contrasting but sociologically credible modes of deflecting, diverting, or otherwise frustrating coercion by the authorities. This testing of the hero--and his thematically necessary response--suggests that suffering and injustice in hard-boiled fiction often results from the abuse of power.

Whereas A Red Death features a working poor black man's active resistance to official coercion, the resistance to authority in Dashiell Hammett's third novel, The Maltese Falcon (1930), differs only in that the hero's socioeconomic and professional standing exceeds Easy's. A white, licensed investigator with a wily lawyer on retainer, Sam Spade reacts aggressively to meddlesome cops and officialdom. He twice maintains the upper hand when detectives drop in to his apartment uninvited to grill him about his partner's murder. In a ploy not available to Rawlins, he preludes his sarcastic ripostes by having white policemen join him for a drink. In another face-off he protects two guests and himself from arrest by extemporizing an outlandish explanation of his guests' mutually hostile behavior. Also unlike Rawlins, Spade can combine verbal sparring with physical passivity; he goads the abrasive Lieutenant Dundy into striking him but retains enough self-control not to retaliate and provide a pretext for arrest. Later, when a corner-cutting, conviction-hunting D. A. threatens to have his license revoked, Spade calls his bluff and asserts the rights of his profession and his clients.

As if Rawlins's minority status does not make his dealings with the authorities difficult enough, his furtive real estate acquisitions and resultant tax delinquency make him vulnerable to the designs of an overbearing IRS agent and a Red-hunting FBI man. Mosley clarifies that, at the mercy of pre-Miranda police interrogators, Rawlins cannot employ Sam Spade's flippancy. Rather, like oppressed people everywhere, he draws integrity from inner resources. When the third-degree escalates to torture, he avoids the slippery slope of replying, a course that would subject him to contrived self-incrimination. He holds out by imagining that his tormentors are sharks closing in on his leaking raft. As the pain intensifies, he maintains self-control by listening to the voice in his head screaming, "Don't give in, Easy" (157). With self-control, patience, and finesse, Easy resists a rogue IRS agent's psychological coercion. He initially denies being a tax-evader, then buys time by feigning cooperation, and eventually plays his antagonist against a self-serving FBI man. Sizing up a targeted communist as benign, Rawlins delays betraying him to U. S. officials. Only when a murder removes Easy's leverage with the FBI, does he resort to aggressive self-defense, getting the IRS off his case by framing his tormentor and luring him into what turns out to be a deadly showdown.