Black Betty (Easy Rawlins Series #4) »

A genre-bending author who can move from science-fiction to mysteries, Walter Mosley is perhaps best-known -- and loved -- for his 1940s and 50s noir crime novels starring the cool, complex detective Easy Rawlins.

Los Angeles, 1961. Kennedy is in the White House and King is marching down South. It's a new day for many blacks in America - but not for Easy Rawlins.

Easy's small real estate empire is in trouble and he is facing bankruptcy when Saul Lynx, an oily white private eye, offers him $200 to track down on Elizabeth Eady, a.k.a. "Black Betty." The sensuous Betty was a housekeeper for an immensely wealthy Beverly Hills family - but now has mysteriously disappeared.

Easy takes the job, but he also has to deal with his murderous sidekick Mouse, who's just been released from Chino prison. Mouse was sent up for manslaughter, and he wants Easy to help him find the ones who gave him up to the police.

Finding Betty seems a simple enough task, but nothing about this woman is as simple as it appears to be. Easy soon finds out her trail is paved with blood - and he might be the next victim of her deadly charms.

Publishers Weekly

Mosley's Easy Rawlins series continues when the down-and-out PI is hired to track down the notorious woman called Black Betty in early-1960s Los Angeles. (July)