Rose Gold: An Easy Rawlins Mystery

Set in 1967 Los Angeles, with the Vietnam War dominating the news, the latest book featuring Mosley’s beloved Easy Rawlins finds the private eye interrupted from settling in to his upscale new home by an increasing number of intriguing missing-person investigations. Chief among them is the search for a boxer-turned-political-protestor, last seen in the company of the missing and presumed-kidnapped daughter of munitions baron Foster Goldsmith. Reader Jackson’s cool, unruffled rendition matches the tone of Rawlins’s first-person narration, including the character’s cynical knowledge of the way things work in the racially divided city. For Easy’s LAPD pal Melvin Suggs, whose career has been blighted by his love for a lawbreaker, Jackson replaces the usual police truculence with a boozy haplessness. A long list of vivid characters spring from Mosley’s mind in each novel. Here it includes pugilists, a group of black militants known as Scorched Earth, and the Patty Hearst–like Rosemary Goldsmith. Jackson brings them all to life with admirable versatility. A Doubleday hardcover. (Oct.)