shadows in action

'Little Scarlet': Anxiety Rises From the Ashes of Mosley's Smoldering City
|This book needs no excess baggage. Its plot explores the riots' irrevocable consequences and builds up to a denouement of "Chinatown"-like eeriness for its secrets and its deadly self-deceptions. What makes it more than a genre piece is Easy's insight into how the world is changing around him. "The morning air still smelled of smoke," the book begins, but before it is over, there is a clearing of the air.|