WALTER MOSLEY

Musta Betty saattelee Easy Rawlinsin 1960-luvulle ja Kennedyn aikaan. Kiinteistötoimet ovat alkaneet syödä enemmän rahaa kuin tuottaa, ja Easy on joutunut myymään talonsa ja muuttamaan vuokralle. Varakkaan työnantajansa palveluksesta isäntänsä kuoleman jälkeen kadonnutta Elizabeth Eadyä jäljittävä valkoinen yksityisetsivä Saul Lynx ilmestyy Easyn ovelle ja palkkaa tämän avukseen. Eady, Musta Betty, on entinen Houstonin mustien slummien kuningatar, "todellinen hai naiseksi. Miehet kuolivat hänen vanavedessään". Hän oli myös nuoren Easyn ensi-ihastus, jolle tämä oli pikkupoikana tehnyt kaikenlaisia pieniä palveluksia saadakseen olla hänen lähellään. Rahapulassaan Easy ottaa työn vastaan ja ajautuu mutkikkaaseen kuoleman ja petosten vyyhteen. Samaan aikaan Easyn murhanhimoinen lapsuudenystävä Hiiri vapautuu vankilasta kärsittyään viiden vuoden tuomion murhasta ja etsii ilmiantajaansa kostaakseen tuomionsa. Ja hän epäilee, että tuo ilmiantaja saattaa olla vaikka Easy.

New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley introduces an astonishing character (Los Angeles Times Book Review) in this acclaimed collection of entwined tales. Meet Socrates Fortlow, a tough ex-con seeking truth and redemption in South Central Los Angeles -- and finding the miracle of survival. I either committed a crime or had a crime done to me every day I was in jail. Once you go to prison you belong there. Socrates Fortlow has done his time: twenty-seven years for murder and rape, acts forged by his huge, rock-breaking hands. Now, he has come home to a new kind of prison: two battered rooms in an abandoned building in Watts. Working for the Bounty supermarket, and moving perilously close to invisibility, it is Socrates who throws a lifeline to a drowning man: young Darryl, whose shaky path is already bloodstained and fearsome. In a place of violence and hopelessness, Socrates offers up his own battle-scarred wisdom that can turn the world around.

November 1963: Easy's settled into a steady gig as a school custodian. It's a quiet, simple existence -- but a few moments of ecstasy with a sexy teacher will change all that. When the lady vanishes, Easy's stuck with a couple of corpses, the cops on his back, and a little yellow dog who's nobody's best friend. With his not-so-simple past snapping at his heels, and with enemies old and new looking to get even, Easy must kiss his careful little life good-bye -- and step closer to the edge.... From "Devil in a Blue Dress" to "Black Betty," New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley has achieved "vibrant, entertaining and tightly plotted suspense novels, " says Peter Handel of the San Francisco Chronicle. Now Mosley, and his reluctant P. I. Easy Rawlins, return to the edgy, racially charged streets of Los Angeles in this dazzling bestseller by a "master of mystery"

The latest mystery from the author of Devil in a Blue Dress featuring a tough black detective in L. A.'s Watts section. The time is 1956and no one i n official L. A. is much bothered as a serial killer proceeds to murder three black bar girls. But when a white stripper is similarly murdered, the heat is finally on to arrest somebody.