Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins

Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins
Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins in the poster for Devil in a Blue Dress
First appearance	Devil in a Blue Dress
Created by	Walter Mosley
Portrayed by	Denzel Washington Clarke Peters
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Private detective
Children	Jesus Feather Edna
Nationality	American

Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins is a fictional character created by mystery author Walter Mosley. Rawlins is an African-American private investigator, a hard-boiled detective and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. He is featured 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 (though 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 later said 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 Easy's first and (as of 2014) only on-screen appearance, the 1995 film adaptation of Devil in a Blue Dress. Clarke Peters played Rawlins in a BBC radio dramatisation of Black Betty. On September 13, 2011, NBC announced it was developing an Easy Rawlins project. In December 2016, filmmaker Josh Boone announced that he was adapting the series for a television series on FX.