The Devil’s Marble Grave Marker

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley is an intense and thrilling detective novel following the main character Easy Rawlins on his mission to find a girl named Daphne Monet in late 1940’s Los Angeles. Throughout the novel Easy has his home, his one beloved possession, broken into several times, is beaten by the police, has friends brutally murdered, and in the end still manages to find the girl in the blue dress he was set forth to locate from the beginning of the novel. However, through all of the emotional ups and downs Walter Mosely exposes his readers to, one might be inclined to overlook the most important part of the story: the title. It is of common assumption that the noted devil in the blue dress from the novels title is the character introduced wearing a blue dress and the one whom Easy says, “That girl is the devil man” (Mosley 148), however, when considering her actions throughout the story and her reason behind those actions, one might need to consider that Daphne is not the true “devil” in the story at all. A true evil character is one who lies and deceives friends for selfish gain and to only further themselves in life and also is one who will kill to cover up what they do not wish others to discover about them. There is only one character who embodies all of these elements true to the nature of a devil and this character is the one who is described as having “a knot over his right eye that always looked red and raw” (Mosley 8), much like the horn of the devil barely hidden beneath his tattered skin. His lies, manipulation, and merciless killings validate that Walter Mosley’s “devil in a blue dress” is none other than the gracious friend and seemingly innocent bar owner, Joppy Shag.

Joppy, throughout the story, can almost always be found meticulously polishing his bar top, a large slab of marble, which is commonly described as strong, cold, and hard not unlike Joppy himself and marble is ironically often used as a cemetery marker which could be an incredible form of foreshadowing by Walter Mosley. Joppy does not seem to be anything but a good friend to Easy when he involves him with Albright in the beginning of the story. He says, “That’s why I called you in on this Easy, I know’d you need some fast money. I don’t give a damn ‘bout that man, or whoever it is he lookin’ fo’ neither” (Mosley 9), by which Joppy means to throw Easy off his track and make him believe that he has nothing to do with what is about to happen and in doing so, Easy doesn’t suspect that Joppy is involved until much later in the story. It isn’t until Coretta James is killed, and Easy returns to Joppy’s bar, that he begins to see some involvement from the previously impartial character. After Easy accuses Joppy of giving Daphne his number, Joppy appears to come clean explaining how he knows her and that he thought he was helping Easy by pretending not to know Daphne so he could make some money off of Albright. By this point, one could assume that either Joppy is telling the truth and honestly is trying to help Easy pay his mortgage or, the more reasonable assumption being that he is lying to Easy to protect himself and hide the horrible things he has done thus far.

It isn’t until the end of the novel that readers are enlightened to the shockingly horrendous actions Joppy has been taking to stay one step ahead of his secrets and lies that built up so detrimentally since he introduced Easy to Albright. When Daphne and Easy enter the little house Primo, an old friend of Easy’s, has rented them, he sees Albright standing before him and he is struck in the head hard enough to knock him out for a couple of hours. When he finally comes to, Primo says Joppy and “the white man in the white suit” (Mosely 198) had come looking for him revealing that Joppy is the one who violently struck Easy and helped to kidnap Daphne. Upon finding Albright’s home in Malibu Hills, Easy looks through the window to find Albright and Joppy standing over Daphne naked on a couch with Joppy “stripped to the waist” (Mosley 201). After Mouse, a trigger happy but nonetheless good friend to Easy throughout the story, kills Joppy, readers finally learn the truth about what Joppy has been hiding all along.

The revealing ending to this emotional novel explains that Joppy kills Howard Green in cold blood and proceeds to beat Coretta to death in the same way simply because of information they knew about Daphne and her connection to Joppy, which ultimately results in his own shocking death by the hands of Mouse. Claiming that he only wanted to help Easy pay his mortgage was a ruse to profit from information at any cost including, but not limited to, murder. Had this story ended differently and Easy had found Daphne early on, turned her in, gotten the money he was promised, and been asked by Joppy for a cut of the earnings from getting Easy the job, refusal could have easily gotten Easy killed as well due to the length at which Joppy is shown to go to in order to cover up his own selfish actions. Conclusively, Joppy is the one character whose lies, manipulation, and frightening violence illustrates a devilish figure in the story and leaves one wondering why Walter Mosely chose to title the novel Devil in a Blue Dress. His choice in title can lead readers on the path to assuming that Daphne, the character who is able to escape without punishment, is the evil character when in reality, upon further detective-like investigation, the devil Walter Mosley is asking readers to discover may very well be found buried beneath his beloved marble bar top.

Work Cited

Mosley, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress. An Easy Rawlins Novel. Washington Square Press, 2002.