Easy Rawlins' life is going well at the moment. His detective agency is ticking along. His adopted daughter, Feather, has settled in and is thriving. He has a girlfriend who definitely holds his interest. 1969 is going well for him although whiffs of unease and unrest are in the air in sunny California. The last thing he needs is a young, white Vietnam vet for a client.

The young man shows up at Rawlin's office and is desperate for help. He tells a disjointed story of taking a date to the blood orange groves he learned about as a child only to encounter a man there. There is a fight and the man is knocked out. When he awakes, his date and dog are gone and he suspects that he might have killed the man he fought with. He wants Easy to find out if there has been a death and to locate his girlfriend and dog. Rawlins is not inclined to take the case but his connection with other veterans tips the balance and he agrees to help the man.

Rawlins starts the investigation with help from various friends. At home, there's another issue. Another young white man has shown up and he is Feather's uncle. He wants to meet her and while Easy knows Feather deserves to know her background and family history, he can't help but wonder what this will mean for the life he and Feather have built together.

As the investigation deepens, Rawlins encounters con men, robberies, his client's mother who is a former dancer and prostitute, and plenty of racist cops. This is the beginning of the Black Panthers and a realization by those of color that things need to change and this may be the time. But there are plenty of people who don't believe change is necessary and they are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the status quo. Bodies start to show up and Rawlins is determined to get to the bottom of it all.

I listened to this novel and the narrator is perfect. His vocal style is like the main character's name, easy and smooth. There are no disquieting pauses or breaks to interrupt the story's flow.

This is the fifteenth novel in the Easy Rawlins series. Walter Mosley is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers Of America and has won numerous prizes for his crime series. His work has also won several NAACP Image Awards as they portray an accurate vision of what racial prejudice means to those living in it and how things have started to change over the past fifty to sixty years. The story in this novel is complex with many characters but everything is resolved satisfactorily by the end. This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Very interesting read! This suspense page turner was a good book!
I got the audio version and I was a little nervous about the narrator!
The characters were great also! I enjoyed this book like alot!
Great job?

I listened to the audiobook and kudos to the narrator Michael Boatman who did a fabulous job. The characters came through as authentic and easily identifiable thanks to the fantastic representation by Boatman. The novel itself was just OK for me. Detective EX Rawlins is clearly a standout and we learn a lot about him, his life, his love of his family especially his daughter, and his relationships with others - he's highly respected and has made a lot of friends. It's the 60s and he's Black, so we also get to see the World through his eyes. The mystery comes as he gets a walkin client who wants to find out to someone he accidentally stabbed before getting knocked out. He woke up but didn't find a body so he's desperate to know what happened. He's also a war vet suffering from PTSD. So yeah - there's a lot going on in this book, but neither the mystery nor the other characters grabbed my attention. EZ and the plot strung me along just enough to want to get done with this book - but I can't say that it was really engrossing. I wanted to like it more than I actually did.

It's not often I read the 15th book in a long-running series before I read any of the previous releases, however here I am!

Blood Grove by Walter Mosley centers around Easy (Ezekiel) Rawlins, a hard-boiled Private Investigator juggling fatherhood to his teenage adopted daughter with his investigative work. The book is set in 1969 in sun-soaked LA with all of the racial tension you might expect.

Thankfully despite Easy's significant backstory, I didn't feel at all disadvantaged picking up this book without having read the others. While I could tell there was a lot of additional detail and nuance I had missed out on, Mosley did a great job of providing enough context to ensure I wasn't completely lost.

In the beginning I was confused by the constant references to characters ethnicities. It was only when I put together the timeframe and the location that it started to make more sense - of course a black PI in the late 60's would have been painfully aware of everyone's race. Call it self-preservation or an occupational hazard - the man would have needed to be all over it.

I enjoyed the breezy writing style but I had some trouble connecting to the other characters. Despite clearly giving some effort to create a historically accurate account of the racial tensions of the day, the characters all felt a little one-dimensional. The hippie uncle. The bombshell. The business-like and aloof secretary. However it's possible this was a symptom of missing some vital pre-reading in the previous books.

I struggled with the complicated plot, too. There was a *lot* going on, with a lot of characters coming in and out. I didn't pick the twist straight away which is always a plus, but I didn't feel any satisfaction at the culmination of the action. I enjoyed the passages involving Feather (Easy's step-daughter) the most, perhaps an indication that I should go back to the beginning and start the books in their chronological order.

There's no doubt Mosely is a talented writer. The pages came to life with colour and movement almost instantly, and I appreciated the strong and nuanced central character of Easy.

The narration was solid with great use of tone and cadence. I feel the audiobook has an advantage over the written version due to the great delivery.

All in all this was a solid detective mystery. I came away with an appreciation for Mosley's work and his extensive fan base that have supported 15 Easy Rawlins tales (and counting).

I received an advance reader copy of this book to listen to in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

**AUDIO COPY**.
Blood Grove is about a PI - Easy (Ezekiel) Rawlins set in 1960's America. Easy is working hard and juggling his investigative work along with his teenage daughter.
The narrator did a fantastic job narrating this book, especially with the amount going on within it. This book is jam packed with characters and a plot that isn't easy to keep tabs on.
I didn't enjoy this book as much as I was hoping to unfortunately. The characters all seemed quite one-dimensional and wooden and the plot was too all over the place. I didn't get the twist until about 3/4 of the way in which is great but I just felt the book was a little rushed and thrown together.