The president's favorite mystery writer is Jewish
and black and loves unusual stories.
Just the other clay he saw a fountain...

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM

ASSISTANT EDITOR

ver since Bill Clinton announced his
campaign for the presidency, the
American public has been having a love
affair with a certain devil.
It was a passing comment that started
it all: Mr. Clinton mentioned that one of
his most pleasurable pastimes was
reading murder mysteries by Walter
Mosley.
In no time, Mr. Mosley's The Devil in a
Blue Dress began selling out at book-
stores across the country, as did his sec-
ond novel, A Red Death. His White
Butterfly, due this month from Pocket
Books, is expected to do equally well.
Mr. Mosley does not fit the typical
image of a detective-story
writer. He's soft-spoken
and thoughtful, not a
hardened wisecracker who
likes his whiskey strong
and his women saucy. He
speaks about the "music"
in his books and says he
loves his characters. He
has been known to change
major aspects of his plots
at the last minute (like
when the book is set to go
to print.)
He's black. And he's
Jewish.
Walter Mosley was born
51 years ago in Los
Angeles, the only child of a black father,
Leroy, and a Jewish mother, Ella.
It was a home in which Walter felt
tremendous love and that nurtured his
identity as both a black and a Jew.
"My parents were always happy with
who they were and who I was," he says.
Walter's father, Leroy, was a native of
New Iberia, La., a place best-known as
the Tabasco capital of the world. Leroy's
mother died when he was 7, which
Walter calls "the greatest tragedy of his
life." His father, about the only one in

town who knew how to read, disappeared
when Leroy was 8. He went out one day
and never returned.
The early loss of his parents forever' \
shaped Leroy Mosley's character. Much
of Leroy remained childlike — "not in a
spoiled way" but reflected in the wonder
and creativity with which he regarded
the world and lived his life, his son says.
After serving in North Africa, Italy
and France during World War II, Leroy
took a job as a maintenance supervisor
in Los Angeles. He married a white
clerk, Ella, who worked in the same
school.
The marriage of Ella and Leroy was a
disappointment to both
families, who would have
preferred
their children
x.
find partners of the same
race.
Ella was a Bronx native,
the descendant of Russian
immigrants. Unlike her
husband, who died earlier
this year, Mrs. Mosley is a
private and serious per-
son. "She was always the
support for my father,"
Walter says. Her relatives
were the few white people
Walter knew well when he
was growing up.
Leroy and Ella's son,
Walter, attended undergraduate school,
then dropped out of the City College of
New York graduate program in writing.
He was employed as a computer pro-
grammer when he started his first book,
Gone Fishin', waking at 5 a.m. each day
and writing until he left for work three
hours later.
Gone Fishin' traces the early lives of
Easy and Mouse, two of his central char-
acters from Devil in a Blue Dress and
Red Death. Publishers were anything but
hooked.

(

(