Fearless Jones

By: Walter Mosley

Narrated by: Peter Francis James

In this thrilling 1950s noir, when a beautiful woman comes into Paris Minton’s life, everything starts falling apart—leaving him no choice but to ask Fearless Jones for help.

Mosley returns to mysteries at last with his most engaging hero since Easy Rawlins. When Paris Minton meets a beautiful new woman, before he knows it he has been beaten up, slept with, shot at, robbed, and his bookstore burned to the ground. He's in so much trouble he has no choice but to get his friend, Fearless Jones, out of jail to help him.©2001 by Walter Mosley, Alll Rights Reserved; (P)2001 by Time Warner AudioBooks, a Division of Time Warner Trade Publishing

Dom’s report

The author details scenes,rooms and people like he was literally there. The action and mystery keeps you reading more and more.

another great book, it is told from Paris' persec

another great book by Walter mosley, this one is told from Paris' perspective, which makes it a bit strange sinve the title is fearless joe. but other than that it is a really engaging book

Another abridged version

Oh no! It’s another abridged version!

I didn’t realize this edition of Fearless Jones was abridged until I went back to get the details for writing this review. I wonder if having the whole unabridged version would have made it easier or more difficult to keep up with what was happening.

An important thing to realize about this book is that it takes place in the early 1950s shortly after the end of World War II. The main characters, Paris Minton and Fearless Jones are living in Watts (in Los Angeles), and, although I have never been anywhere close to Watts I get the impression that very little has changed about life there since the 1950s. Sure, there have been riots and famous beatings since then, but all that appears to have been part of the same stream of life with not nearly enough changing.

The only clues that this is the 1950s instead of the 1980s or the early 2000s are the intermittent mentions of World War II (Fearless is a veteran of that war), a couple of mentions of Paris’ car (which he has to do without for most of the story because it is stolen early on) being a Rambler – I had almost forgotten about them – and the mysterious elusive bond that everybody is chasing all over the place and getting killed over.

To begin with, Paris, a quiet man who loves reading and who, when left to his own devices is reasonably sensible, owns a used book store there in Watts. He won’t ever get rich from it but is managing to pay the rent and other bills while getting to read most of the day. But all this ends when this woman, Elena Love, comes into the store looking to hide from her boyfriend. Paris lets her into the back room where he sleeps and manages to get rid of the boyfriend – for the moment. But it is all over for him. By the next morning, the girl is gone, having stolen his car in the bargain, and before the day is over, the bookstore has been burned to the ground.

That’s when Paris decides he needs to bail his friend, Fearless Jones out of jail.

From then on their lives are a whirlwind of strangeness. They have no money, no transportation, no food, and no place to sleep. Yet they manage to get along somehow and in the process find the truth about this Elena Love and her boyfriend, her other boyfriend from a little storefront church that has just moved out of the neighborhood, and the bond that Elena has supposedly stolen from the first boyfriend.

Book Wonderful, Music Distracting

Like all of Mosley’s work, this book is engaging and beautifully written. He is truly a masterful story teller. Walter Mosley is one of my favorite word smiths and to-date I haven’t been unhappy with any of the narrators for his audio books. However, I have noticed in a few of the Easy Rawlins and Fearless audio books the insertion of musical transitions. These transitions are distracting to say the least. To say the most, they are outright annoying. This is the only flaw in the audio book versions of Mosley’s work worth noting. Fortunately for Mosley his publishing company has chosen outstanding artists to perform his work. The music doesn’t add to the performance as much as it takes away.However, don’t let my pet peeve about the music dissuade you from purchasing the audio book.

Mosley at Perfection

I'm a big fan of Mosley's Easy Rawlins series and was a little apprehensive about a listen with different characters. The book, the characters, the dialog and the narration all swept me along in vintage LA in a story of strange loyalties and soul searching. As a white woman who grew up in segregated Texas and witnessed (from afar and with joy) the civil rights movement, I'll never truly understand what life was and is like for black men and women, but Mosley's stories bring me so much closer. His characters are so real and so deep they walk around in my head like old friends I miss.