Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Easy Rawlins has lived a long time, and he has learned many ways to just stay alive. As a black man in 1960s LA, he is definitely in the minority, and seen by most whites as either a threat or at least dangerous. But he has finally built up a private investigation business with two partners and they are doing well, or well for middle-aged black men in 1960s LA.

He gets a call from one of his old friends, a renowned gangster that Easy has known all his life. This friend wants him to help another influential black man who has taken an interest in a young black doctoral student that has been charged with a double murder. Everyone, including the police, know this young man did not commit the murders, but he was found on the scene with two dead men, so why look further? Easy's job is to look further and clear the young man so he can resume his professorial pursuits and make everyone proudl

Of course, the task is not as clear cut as it would seem and the story takes a lot of twists and turns. And the two original dead men are joined by several other bodies before the story ends.

If you have never read an Easy Rawlins story, this one stands on its own enough not to have needed a lot of background. If you have read previous stories, this one does not disappoint.

This story picks up from the last book and you find Easy now with his own private investigative detective agency. This along with other areas in his life just add to this story. The author has added some characters to this book like he has in the past in other books and this just adds to the story. What really keeps this book along with all of the others in this series, is the way the author Mr. Mosely keeps true to the time period, and for me what was going on at the time and when he is describing either Southern California or other parts of California it takes me back in time when I would travel some of those roads with my family. In this story he is asked by a friend to help his son who is a student at Sanford and is standing over a dead white man. The student being African American is automatically accused of the murder. All of the rest of the story falls into place for the time period of the 1970’s, but some of the issues we are still facing today. This is the author’s way of showing us how far we still need to go, or how much we lost. Overall a good story and like his other book good characters. Very much other the read.

Masterful writing bogged down by hard-to-follow plot and too many characters

There is no denying that Walter Mosely can write like nobody's business. In creating the main character Easy Rawlins, Mosely captures the essence of what it's like to be a black man in the 1960s, as well as what it's like to be (mostly) on the right side of the law when others around are criminal.

The lastest installment of the Easy Rawlins series proved to be too much of a good thing. There were far too many characters and I couldn't keep them all straight. I don't think I'd make a good gangster, becuase I couldn't keep track of the plot. As one other reviewer said, "At the end of the book I still didn't know who had the money."

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.