Situada en 1967, en la décima entrega de la serie de novelas criminales protagonizada por Easy Rawlins nos encontramos a un Rawlins de mediana edad que empieza a acusar el paso del tiempo y los fantasmas que nunca lo abandonaron.
Easy está lidiando con en el hecho de haber abandonado a Bonnie, con que sus hijos ya se han hecho mayores y con que Los Angeles está sufriendo cambios tan radicales después de los enfrentamientos raciales, que hasta a un superviviente como él le cuesta adaptarse a la ciudad donde siempre ha vivido.
Sin embargo, Rawlins siempre parece encontrar nuevos problemas a los que hacer frente. Dos peligrosos amigos de Easy, Ratón Alexander y Navidad Black, han desaparecido. Al primero lo buscan por el asesinato de Pericles Tarr; Navidad, por su parte, dejó a su hija Pascua en casa de Easy y se esfumó. La aparición de la policía militar en busca de Black, hace que Easy se ponga a trabajar para descubrir qué ha pasado y la relación que existe entre las desapariciones de sus amigos, el asesinato de Tarr y la aparición de una mujer rubia que no es como parece ser.

In this (No. 10) entry in the Easy Rawlins series, our man is a mess...he has lost his job, as well as the love of his life, and he's foundering. He has a house full of dependents, including his two adopted children, one of their significant others, and a tiny new grandchild, not to mention a surprise addition---the young daughter of a recent acquaintance who has been "dropped off" by her father without warning or explanation. Both the child's father and Easy's life-long friend Ray (a/k/a Mouse) are missing, and a lot of people want to know where they have gone. The police suspect Mouse of killing another man whose whereabouts are also unknown, but neither Mouse's loyal Etta Mae nor the other man's wife believe that to be true. Easy's in the search, going at it from so many directions my head was spinning, and his emotional state is causing him considerable disorientation as well. Gotta say this is not my favorite of the series; I don't like where Easy finds himself, and it felt like Mosley wasn't too sure about his direction either. He also left us hanging very uncomfortably on the last page. I'm not a fan of that technique in series fiction; it cost this one a full star. ( )

Classic Easy Rawlins detective story. ( )

Mouse is in trouble: wanted for the police for the murder of Pericles Tarr who is missing. Christmas Black is in trouble: having killed a man and being looked for by Colonel Clarence Miles, General Thaddeus King and Miles' men. Easy Rawlins is in trouble: he has lost the love of his life, Bonnie; has no regular job; has new additions to his family, Easter Dawn, the adopted child of Christopher Black, and Essie, new born daughter of his son Jesus and his common-law wife, Benita Flagg.The blonde, Faith Laneer is in trouble: her husband, Craig, who has been running drugs out of Viet Nam, has been tortured and murdered to silence him when he tried to quit, and his killers are after her.

One characteristic of a good book is that the author makes you care about the protagonist. One reason Great Expectations is so good is that you care deeply about Pip's adventures. "Oh no", you say, "what's going to happen to Pip?" And so you read on, fully engaged in Pip's life.

So too, it would seem with Walter Mosley's character Easy Rawlins. By mere chance, I got two Easy Rawlins' books to take on vacation, and again by chance, they followed in chronological order. After I finished the second book, I just had to find the third: "oh no, what's going to happen between Easy and Bonnie?"

So, I read this book to find out. Along the way, we have all kinds of musing about race issues, the Vietnam war, the fragility of life, etc. This, like its two previous siblings, was a good read.

Wikipedia indicates this book to be the last one published in this series, so I can ask what happens next, but I won't actually know anytime in the near future, perhaps never. ( )