White Butterfly : Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Lavender"
- Book Review,
by Walter Mosley
From Publishers Weekly
The third novel in Mosley's acclaimed series starring Easy Rawlins, a black PI who lives and works in the Watts section of L.A. in the 1950s, centers on the investigation of the murder of a white college coed who led a double life as a stripper. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Black detective Easy Rawlins aids his dangerous-but-loyal friend Mouse, accused of killing several bar girls in 1958 Los Angeles. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
Easy Rawlins continues his recollections with the story of a case he investigated against his will. It's 1956. He wants to put his earlier life as a black man on L.A.'s mean streets--recounted in earlier volumes--behind him. He's married now, with an infant daughter and a comfortable, secret, income. But the cops need him to help catch a serial killer who preys on hookers. Plus, his conscience won't let him alone. Again, he pokes his nose into physical danger and threatens his marriage in the process. Stanley Bennett Clay handles the narrative with the jerky awkwardness of a novice. But his dialogue has personality and authenticity. Y.R. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Kirkus Reviews
Watts sometime-detective Easy Rawlins (Devil in a Blue Dress, A Red Death) is married when Mosley picks up his tale in 1956, but he still hasn't settled down: He's never told his nurses'-aide wife Regina about the property he owns or how he spends his days, and the local law still leans on him for help when they're up against it. This time, a sex killer has taken a break from three low-profile snuffs of black women to murder UCLA coed Robin Garnett, a.k.a. Cyndi Starr, the White Butterfly--a stripper who kept her scandalous public life very private--and the cops want answers they didn't care about before. Easy and his murderous friend Mouse drift through Mosley's trademark bars, brothels, and Chinese laundries in L.A. and S.F. in search of the police suspect, J. T. Saunders--but when the suspect is killed in a bar fight in front of his eyes, Easy smells a setup. As usual, plotting, setting, dialogue, and social comment are all as mannered as Raymond Chandler and--if the manner doesn't put you off--nearly as compelling. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
The New York Times Book Review With White Butterfly, Walter Mosley has established himself as one of America's best mystery writers.
Book Description
The police don't show up on Easy Rawlins's doorstep until the third girl dies. It's Los Angeles, 1956, and it takes more than one murdered black girl before the cops get interested. Now they need Easy. As he says: "I was worth a precinct full of detectives when the cops needed the word in the ghetto." But Easy turns them down. He's married now, a father -- and his detective days are over. Then a white college coed dies the same brutal death, and the cops put the heat on Easy: If he doesn't help, his best friend is headed for jail. So Easy's back, walking the midnight streets of Watts and the darker, twisted avenues of a cunning killer's mind....
About the Author
Walter Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series, the novels Bad Boy Brawly Brown, Fearless Jones, Blue Light, and RL's Dream, and a collection of stories, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award. He was born in Los Angeles and lives in New York.
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