Preview of White Butterfly Summary:

The premise of Mosley's detective series is the evil of racial prejudice, which Easy Rawlins encounters at every turn. In White Butterfly, Easy is caught in a racist society that forces him to conceal or to subvert his identity. This self-alienation relates to an important theme in the novel, African American gender relations. This time around Easy is married with two children, an adopted son and a baby daughter born to him and his wife, Regina. But Easy has never let his wife know the source of their income, his secretly held rental properties.

Easy's secrecy is built upon the concern not to alienate the African Americans he knows, who endure lives of limited opportunities in deteriorating Watts. Easy's secretiveness is also compulsive, based on long experience defending himself in a precarious world: "Never in my whole life had anyone ever been able to demand to know about...