"It's 1953 in Red-baiting, blacklisting Los Angeles, a moral tar pit ready to swallow Easy Rawlins. Easy is out of 'the hurting business' and into the housing (and favor) business when a racist IRS agent nails him for tax evasion. Special Agent Darryl T. Craxton, FBI, offers to bail him out if he agrees to infiltrate the First American Baptist Church and spy on alleged communist organizer Chaim Wenzler. That's when the murders begin."--Provided by...

LA's black investigator Easy Rawlins, financially in the hole, must accept $2,000 from the oily white private eye Saul Lynx to track down one Elizabeth Eady, aka Black Betty. From her native Houston to her position as a housekeeper for a wealthy Beverly Hills family Betty's beauty and sensuality have left a trail of chaos. By the author of 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...

1964: Easy has given up the street life and has taken on a job as a supervising custodian at Sojourner Truth High School. But his newly found carefree lifestyle is threatened when two corpses are discovered at the school and the police think Easy is involved.

To save the home that has belonged to his family for generations, Charles Blakey, a young black man whose life is slowly crumbling around him, agrees to rent out his basement for the summer to a mysterious stranger.

Socrates Fortlow, a former black convict in Watts, tries to go straight, holding a steady job, helping the town's youth and philosophizing with friends. But when a policeman starts raping and killing blacks, Socrates turns vigilante.