Walter Mosley: Cinnamon Kiss

It’s the Summer of Love, but anxiety, not libido, is at the forefront of Easy Rawlins’s thoughts. His daughter, Feather, has contracted a rare blood disease; to save her life, Easy must come up with $35,000 lickety-split. Predictably, his Watts pal Mouse has a surefire money-making plan that involves armed robbery. Rejecting that risky option, Easy tries his luck instead with a missing-persons job involving an eccentric lawyer and an alluring woman named Cinnamon Cargill. Indelible atmosphere; memorable characters; realistic suspense. It is the Summer of Love and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armored car. It’s farther outside the law than Easy has ever traveled, but his daughter, Feather, needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time. And his friend Mouse tells him it’s a cinch. Then another friend, Saul Lynx, offers a job that might solve Easy’s problem without jail time. He has to track the disappearance of an eccentric, prominent attorney. His assistant of sorts, the beautiful “Cinnamon” Cargill, is gone as well. Easy can tell there is much more than he is being told-Robert Lee, his new employer, is as suspect as the man who disappeared. But his need overcomes all concerns, and he plunges into unfamiliar territory, from the newfound hippie enclaves to a vicious plot that stretches back to the battlefields of Europe.