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. 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 -- and
his detective days are over. Then a white college coed dies the same
brutal death, and the cops put the heat on Easy: If he 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....