SOURCE: "Mysteries That Reveal More Than Just Whodunit," in The New York Times, August 7, 1992, p. C25.

In the following excerpt, Mitgang determines that Mosley has grown "deeper and richer" with White Butterfly, noting that the author emulates the masters of the detective-fiction genre but "continues to reveal the inside of the black-and-white encounter in his own voice."

If you're not careful while reading detective fiction, you're liable to learn something. While taking the reader for a ride before solving the mystery, the best writers in the field have something to say, about a city, a profession, a just cause, a moral climate. Of course, the detective story must abide by the rules of pursuit and solution. But it doesn't violate the formula if, lurking between the lines, there's a novel of manners, mostly bad.

In White Butterfly, Walter Mosley, creator of Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator living...