Whether it's the smoky jazz joints of New York or a multi-racial housing project in Los Angeles, justice comes to the streets in shades of sable.
"Working as a janitor at Sojourner Truth Junior High School, Easy Rawlins is asked to care for a small dog owned by the attractive Idabell Holland, a teacher at the school. When Idabell's husband is murdered, Easy finds himself mixed up with a gang of criminals engaged in looting Los Angeles schools and smuggling heroin from France."
Benjamin January, a Creole physician and piano teacher who has known the glories of Paris as well as of his native New Orleans, is at the Blue Ribbon Ball during Mardi Gras. Near the ball, Angelique Crozat, an octoroon who travels in the city's finest company, is found murdered--and there is no shortage of suspects. This novel transports the reader to the center of the cosmopolitan South in an age when both its glories and the forces which would tear it apart are equally in evidence.
"After Nikki Chase--a smart, ambitious, attractive black economics professor--stumbles over her friend Ella's body during a blackout, she finds herself plunged into the investigation and uncovering some of Harvard's most deeply buried secrets."