A Little Yellow Dog

An Easy Rawlins Mystery

By: Walter Mosley

Narrated by: Howard Weinberger

Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

It's 1963. Easy Rawlins has given up the street life and is now the supervising custodian of Sojourner Truth High School in Watts. He gets up early and goes off to work. He wears nice clothes and puts all his energy and love into his job and his adopted children. He likes his new life.

But his life changes when Easy comes in early one morning to find one of the teachers already in her classroom. She has her dog with her, and a story about a husband gone mad. Before Easy knows what's happening, the teacher is in his arms. Before the day is over the teacher is gone, leaving Easy with her dog - and a corpse in the school garden.

Easy may have left the streets, but he hasn't been forgotten. The police believe that Easy is involved in the murders. Old enemies are waiting to get even. The principal of the school wants to fire him. His old friends aren't the same, and his new friends might mean his death. A murderer is running lose somewhere. And a little yellow dog plots revenge.

Hear more of Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries. And Listen to a conversation with Walter Mosley.

©1996 Walter Mosley (P)2002 Audio Renaissance, a Division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC

Critic reviews

"The best book yet in this fine series. Easy Rawlins [is] one of the most distinctive voices in crime fiction." (The Seattle Times)
"A well energized and crafty novel." (The New York Times Book Review)

the story is great, but the narrator is awful

I loved all the previous Easy Rawlins audiobooks. They are great stories, compelling, suspenseful, real. I highly, highly recommend all the books, and this one is no exception.

BUT. The previous narrator, Stanley Bennett Clay, was fantastic. A perfect Easy. In constrast, the narrator for this book, Howard Weinberger...i have to say, he was truly awful. He stumbled over words, chronically mispronounced things, his emphasis was all wrong. It sounded like a kid in school hesitantly reading something for the first time. It was as if he had never seen the script before...and didn't bother to look up the words he didn't understand! It was so jarring, I considered several times going out and buying the book so I could finish it without listening to him. It made me wince. It was really disappointing.

All in all, I would listen to all the previous books, but read this one.

Compelling story, poor narration

To be fair, this fifth Easy Rawlins Book followed four narrated by the incomparable Michael Boatman, and I don't envy any narrator trying to fill those giant shoes. That said, this is a pivotal work in the Rawlins canon. It gives us a new Easy, no longer a man of the streets, but a hard-working supervising custodian at a school, clinging to family life and sobriety. It's a compelling and important story, and it deserved better than Howard Weinberger's narration. The Easy Rawlins novels are as much about the Los Angeles of the era as they are about the lead character. Having a narrator who can't even pronounce "La Cienega" pulls the listener right out of the story at crucial moments. Inexcusable.

awful narration.

Narration is what makes audio books come to life. I spent so much time thinking about the mistakes and lack of character differentiation that found it hard to enjoy this great story. Instead of laying all the blame on the narrator himself, I fault the producers of this work. They have had ample time to rerecord this book with a competent professional.

pretty good

This book was pretty good. I struggled to keep the book going until the last 4 hours. I believe I have read these books out of order b/c now I know how he met Bonnie Shay.

The NARRATOR ruined this book for me.

I love Walter and all that he writes. Typically I truly enjoy his books, audio or otherwise. IV been reading since his first novel and listen since his books were on tape. When I say words escape me whilst trying to communicate how bad this was, I mean they escape me. I've never left a review such as this and I pray I never have to again!!!!

Worst narrator ever

I have only listened to one other book in this series, but I have read the others before this one. I really dig the realism and continuing story overlayed on top of new mysteries. Easy Rawlins is a grity character, who lets us focus on racism in Souther California in the 60's. The narrator almost ruined this great story for me. He was terrible.

Great Story, Poor Narration

"A Little Yellow Dog" was another great entry in the Easy Rawlins mystery series. However, the narration by Howard Weinberger left much to be desired. This audiobook would have been greatly enhanced if it had been narrated by Michael Boatman. Also, the chapter divisions made the listen odd.

Bad Narration!

I didn't like the narration on this book AT ALL. His tone, pronunciation, inflections, and pauses were just WRONG! ALL WRONG! Good story...bad story telling

Easy Always Does It

This was a great part of the Easy Rawlins series. Once again your drawn in and waiting to see what Easy's gonna do next. Easy never fails to deliver, I just wish he could settle down. Perhaps Bonnie Shae is the answer...on yo the next book to find out.

A solid story

It took some getting used to the new narrators voice and I think they should have had him re-read some parts where he clearly messed up but overall not too bad.

This was a solid story it is the first story so far where I really could not tell what was going on until it was revealed. usually I can spot the big picture early on in the story but this time not so much. The story was solid but not as exciting as the previous stories, you do see character growth from a lot of people mentioned in the previous books.