“Master of craft and narrative”Walter Mosley returns with thiscrowning achievement in the Easy Rawlins saga, in which the iconicdetective’s loyalties are tested on the sun-soaked streets of Southern California (National Book Foundation)

It is 1969, and flames can be seen on the horizon, protest wafts like smoke though the thick air, and Easy Rawlins, the Black private detective whose small agency finally has its own office, gets a visit from a white Vietnam veteran. The young man comes to Easy with a story that makes little sense. He and his lover, a beautiful young woman, were attacked in a citrus grove at the citys outskirts. He may have killed a man, and the woman and his dog are now missing. Inclined to turn down what sounds like nothing but trouble, Easy takes the case when he realizes how damaged the young vet is from his war experiencesthe bond between veterans superseding all other considerations.

The veteran is not Easys only unlooked-for trouble. Easys adopted daughter Feathers white uncle shows up uninvited, raising questions and unsettling the life Easy has long forged for the now young woman. Where Feather sees a family reunion, Easy suspects something else, something that will break his heart.

Blood Grove is a crackling, moody, and thrilling race through a California of hippies and tycoons, radicals and sociopaths, cops and grifters, both men and women. Easy will need the help of his friendsfrom the genius Jackson Blue to the dangerous Mouse Alexander, Fearless Jones, and Christmas Blackto make sense of a case that reveals the darkest impulses humans harbor.

Blood Grove is a novel of vast scope and intimate insight, and a soulful call for justice by any means necessary.