Blonde Faith (Easy Rawlins Series #10) » (Reprint)

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.

Easy Rawlins, L.A.'s most reluctant detective, comes home one day to find Easter, the daughter of his friend Chrismas Black, left on his doorstep. Easy knows that this could only mean that the ex-marine Black is probably dead, or will be soon. Easter's appearance is only the beginning, as Easy is immersed in a sea of problems. The love of his life is marrying another man and his friend Mouse is wanted for the murder of a father of 12.

As he's searching for a clue to Christmas Black's whereabouts, two suspicious MPs hire him to find his friend Black on behalf of the U.S. Army. Easy's investigation brings him to Faith Laneer, a blonde woman with a dark past. As Easy begins to put the pieces together, he realizes that Black's dissappearance has its roots in Vietnam, and that Faith might be in a world of danger.

The New York Times - Jabari Asim

Mosley has been accused of writing purple prose, a charge the sex scenes in Blonde Faith are unlikely to dispel. Outside the bedroom, though, his compact dialogue continues to sparkle, and his scene-setting is as skillful as ever. It could very well be that we critics fail to fully appreciate Mosley's talents because his Rawlins mysteries appear to come off so effortlessly. They bring to mind a former N.B.A. All-Star's modest attempt to explain his otherworldy playmaking to a group of ordinary mortals. "If it looks easy," he said, "it's not."