Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins is a fictional character created by mystery author Walter Mosley. Private investigator Easy is a black hard-boiled detective and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, and features in a series of best-selling mysteries set from the 1940s to the 1960s.

The mysteries combine traditional conventions of detective fiction with descriptions of racial inequities and social injustice experienced by African-Americans and other persons of color in the Los Angeles of that period and the present. While Rawlins is clearly in the tradition of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, and Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer, he differs sharply from these earlier fictional detectives in that Rawlins is an unlicensed private investigator (he acquires a license late in the series) with no background or training in law enforcement.

Mosley has written ten novels, and a collection of short stories, starring Rawlins, his most popular character. Mosley once stated he intended to bring the character into contemporary times, but Mosley later said that the 2007 novel Blonde Faith, which is set in 1967, would be the last. Six years later, a new Easy Rawlins novel entitled Little Green was published.

The character was played by Denzel Washington in Rawlins' first and (as of 2014) only on-screen appearance, the 1995 film adaptation of Devil in a Blue Dress. On September 13, 2011, NBC announced it was developing an Easy Rawlins project.

Biography

Easy's birthday is November 3, 1920. He was born in Louisiana, but spent his late childhood and adolescence living on his own in the Fifth Ward of Houston, Texas. His mother died when he was eight years old, and his father abandoned the family (to avoid reprisals after a violent, racially charged confrontation) prior to her death. Rawlins served in the US Army during World War II, and afterward worked at an aircraft assembly plant.