Private Eyes and “Little Helpers”: Doormen, Gatekeepers, and Racial Trespass in Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely and Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress

Abstract

ABSTRACT Raymond Chandler's and Walter Mosley's protagonists move through different neighborhoods of midcentury Los Angeles and interact with various "gatekeepers" whose function is to maintain and reinforce the racialized urban boundaries of access between LA's neighborhoods, institutions, and other highly regulated public and private spheres. These encounters illuminate anxieties about the stability of racial categories, the physical urban space that these categories would control and organize, and notions of racial and class mobility in midcentury America.