I read this book as part of the Books-a-month group at Yahoo. Didn't like the sound of it going in, and there was a lot of negative posting about it in the beginning. I decide to plunge in and read it anyway. It did have a way of sucking me in so that I stuck with it, as I wanted to know how it ended. The book was somewhat confusing though, in the vast quantity of characters that it continued to introduce all the way through the book. I will give it credit, for not letting out who the killer was until almost to the end. Maybe others were able to figure it out, but I was still playing catch up on all the names!
From the cover: A Red Death plunges Easy deep into the political, legal, and moral tar pits of LA in the early fifties, when Red-baiting and blacklisting were official policy and racial tensions boiled. Easy is now out of "the hurting business" and into the housing (and the favor) business, on the strength of funds dating from his earlier adventures. He's a little older, a little wiser - and in a lot more trouble. He suddenly finds a corrupt, racist IRS agent breathing down his neck (and reaching for his wallet) about some unpaid taxes. His only out: cut a deal with the FBI to infiltrate the First African Baptist Church and spy on a former Polish resistance fighter suspected of stealing defense plans.
Meanwhile, Easy's romantic life becomes equally complicated and dangerouse when he takes in his old flame Etta Mae Harris. Hard on her heels is Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, her ex-husband, Easy's best friend, a dark, gleefully homicidal angel. Then the murders begin...and the LAPD decides that Easy is a convenient suspect. His search for the actual murderer must be conducted in an ethical mine field, where the stark choice is between betrayal and survival.
I give it 3 stars.
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