The major character in White Butterfly is Easy Rawlins, Mosley's African American sleuth. Easy remains a remarkable fictional personality, at once strong and intelligent, compassionate and sensitive. At the center of Easy's being is his objection to racism, from which he has suffered since his poor boyhood in Louisiana and Texas. Now in 1956 he lives in his little house in Watts, having established himself as a man of some means, despite the district's poverty, moral bankruptcy, crime, and general lack of opportunity.

Easy owns properties and collects rents. He has educated himself past the high school level, and reads The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, and Plato's "Phaedo," the latter making him wonder how it would feel to be white, "a man who felt that he belonged."

Easy's sideline of investigative work derives from his "outsider" status.

Easy knows Watts, and can "ask...