CINNAMON KISS

1966. Watts has stopped burning, but it’s no safer for Easy Rawlins, on the trail of some mysterious documents that leave death in their wake.

A man will do things he never thought he would when his little girl is sick, and Easy’s considering joining his friend Mouse Alexander for a holdup so that he can finance medical treatment for his ailing daughter Feather. Then his friend Saul Lynx offers him a job that may keep him afloat: tracking down storefront attorney Axel Bowers and his servant Philomena (Cinnamon) Cargill, together with a briefcase full of unspecified papers, for San Francisco shamus Robert E. Lee, who’s acting on behalf of an anonymous client. Knowing that nobody pays a black man $10,000 without good reason, Easy expects trouble and treachery. He’s not surprised when he learns that Bowers is dead and the documents he’s been sent to retrieve include bearer bonds and a letter with an ugly pedigree that goes back to WWII. But he’s not prepared for the stone killer who suddenly pops up behind him, or for the coolly manipulative way Cinnamon uses sex to get whatever she wants, or for the bad blood between Bobby Lee and Maya Adamant, his lieutenant. And he’s certainly not prepared for the emotional storm the case will stir up in his own breast.

Lacks the searing intensity of Little Scarlet (2004), but still as rich and tightly wound as you’d expect from Mosley.