Mosley's first published book introduces Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins in 1948 Los Angeles. A World War II veteran just fired from his defense-plant job and staring at a mortgage he cannot pay, Easy is hired by a white fixer, DeWitt Albright, to find Daphne Monet, a white woman known to move through Black jazz clubs. The search pays the mortgage and makes a detective of him — at a price in blood and compromise that the long series that followed kept counting. The novel won the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel and was filmed in 1995 with Denzel Washington as Easy.
Author: Walter Mosley · Original publisher: W. W. Norton (New York), 1990
