Easy has just lost his job thanks to “mouthing off” to his White supervisor at the plant when he gets word that another White man wants to hire him to find a missing woman. It’s not easy (forgive the pun) surviving as a Black man in 1950s Los Angeles, but Rawlins is about to find out how hard it is when everyone wants to kill you.

This was on my TBR for a long time, as it won a lot of awards and started a whole trend opening up POC as detectives. However, it was a lot grittier than I like in a mystery. I’m glad I read it, as the issues of race are really front and center in the story and they couldn't be more timely. It was an eye-opener about how violent and hopeless the Black community could be at the time and how little some things have chaned. But I didn’t care for the style and I don’t think I’ll continue with this series.