Albright asks Easy to meet him at another location to discuss the details of the job. Albright, but he has been fired from his job at Champion aircraft and is trying to pay off a mortgage. Albright does undercover favors for people and he wants Easy to help him on his next job. Albright proposes over drinks that Easy work for him. He reminds Easy of a man he used to know named Mouse, which makes him very uneasy.

Albright seems to have a good deal of sway even over Joppy himself, who acts nervous around him. He explains: 'I ate with them and slept with them, and I killed enough blue-eyed young men to know that they were just as afraid to die as I was.' Mr. Yet Easy tells us that he is accustomed to being in white company because he fought in World War II in Africa, Italy, Paris, and Germany. Alright is white, from his skin to nearly every item of his clothing. Its smell and dingy atmosphere usually keeps white folks away. Easy Rawlins is surprised when DeWitt Albright, a large and imposing white man, walks into Joppy's bar. 25,000 first printing $25,000 ad/promo movie rights to Reuben Cannon Mysterious Book Club and QPB selections.The novel opens in Los Angeles in the year 1948. But the first-person narrative, which hurtles along with improbable transitions and sketchy psychological portraits, leaves the reader winded rather than exhilarated at the book's predictable conclusion. The language is hard-boiled (``Somewhere between the foo young and the check I decided to cut my losses'') and the portrait of black city life gritty and real. With bodies piling up, there is no turning back for Easy, as he is dogged by brutish white cops and a few ``brothers'' none too friendly. Easy becomes entangled in a chain of events that takes him to bar after bar to meet a range of characters, most of whom are seeking their own advantages in the pursuit of Daphne. But a white businessman, Dewitt Albright, engages Easy to locate a beautiful French woman named Daphne Monet who has a ``predilection for the company of negroes.'' She also has $30,000 of someone else's money.

He knows racism firsthand and seeing too many white men in one day unnerves him. Easy hails originally from the tough Fifth Ward in Houston he served his country, landing on the Normandy Beach. in 1948, introduces Ezekiel ``Easy'' Rawlins, a recently laid-off mechanic who is young, black and-but for the need to meet the mortgage on his new house-a most reluctant sleuth.

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley