Walter Mosley: White Butterfly (UK 2009)

From the Publisher:
It's 1956 and no one official in Los Angeles pays much attention when three black bar girls are murdered. But when a white stripper is similarly murdered and she turns out to be the daughter of a powerful LA prosecutor, all hell breaks loose. The LAPD calls on Easy Rawlins for help: he can go places and do things the police cannot. Reluctantly, Easy accepts their plea and begins a deadly quest that takes him through the seedy jazz joints of Bone Street and the dingy rooms of Hollywood Row. It is a brutal, dangerous odyssey that jeopardizes his marriage and his life - and leads to a shocking conclusion.

Walter Mosley: White Butterfly. Serpent's Tail, ISBN: 9781852429829 (March, 2009), 272 p., £7.99.

Walter Mosley: White Butterfly (USA 2002)

From the Publisher:
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 or, as he says, "I was worth a precinct full of detectives when the cops needed the word in the ghetto." Easy turns them down, he's married now, a father -- his detective days are over. But everything changes when a white college girl dies the same brutal death. The cops put the heat on Easy: if he doesn't help, his best friend is headed for jail. So Easy is back, walking the midnight streets of Watts and the even darker avenues of a twisted killer's cunning mind.

Walter Mosley: White Butterfly. Washington Square Press, ISBN 0743451775 (October, 2002), 309 p., $14.00.

Walter Mosley: White Butterfly (USA 1993)

From the Publisher:
Walter Mosley won acclaim as the most exciting new mystery writer in America with his first two novels, Devil in a Blue Dress and A Red Death. Now comes White Butterfly, a powerful, mesmerizing tale of two men, each of whom destroys what he loves most in the world -- one because of his secret shame, the other because of his secret pride. One of the two is a killer. The other is Easy Rawlins, the man who tracks him down.

The police don't show up on Easy'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-his detective days are over. Then a white college coed dies the same way, and the cops make it clear that if Easy 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, in the most explosive Easy Rawlins mystery yet...

Walter Mosley: White Butterfly. An Easy Rawlins Mystery. Pocket Books, ISBN 0671867873 (July, 1993), 292 p., $5.99.

Walter Mosley: White Butterfly (USA 1992)

From the Publisher:
Andrew Vachss called Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley's debut mystery featuring Easy Rawlins, a tough black private detective in L.A.'s Watts section, "the most self-assured, uniquely-voiced first novel I've ever read." The Wall Street Journal said of its sequel, A Red Death: "Remarkable... proves Mr. Mosley's debut was no fluke." Readers and critics agree that Walter Mosley is writing novels fit to stand alongside the giants of the L.A. hardboiled tradition.

In Mosley's eagerly awaited new mystery, White Butterfly, the time is 1956 and, things being what they are, no one in official Los Angeles is much bothered as a serial killer proceeds to murder three black bar girls, leaving a distinctive mark each time. But when a white stripper, Cyndi Starr, aka "The White Butterfly" on stage, is similarly murdered - and she turns out to be a UCLA coed and the daughter of a politically powerful prosecutor - all hell breaks loose. The heat is finally on to find the killer.

Which is why Quinten Naylor, a black LAPD detective, arrives on Easy Rawlins's doorstep one morning - for Easy can go places and do things the police simply cannot. Easy, married now and a father, initially says no - until the police finger his cheerfully murderous sidekick Raymond "Mouse" Alexander as a suspect. So Easy begins an odyssey along the seedy jazz joints of Bone Street and the furnished rooms of Hollywood Row in search of the killer, in a case that will put his marriage, his business and his cunningly constructed secret life in the most dire jeopardy.

White Bunterfly crackles with tension and offers, as the best American crime fiction always does, a vivid moral landscape of a particular time and place. The language swings with the jazz rhythms of the streets, while sounding sweet and mournful blues notes underneath. It is the best Easy Rawns novel yet - a triumph for Walter Mosley, his creator.

Walter Mosley: White Butterfly. An Easy Rawlins Mystery. W. W. Norton, ISBN 039303366X (July, 1992), 272 p., $19.95.