Point of View

The novel is told in the first person. Easy Rawlins narrates the story in a compelling manner, mixing his tale of the story's action with personal musings about big ideas. For instance, when he first meets Albright, Easy feels a moment of fear. That fear is natural to him as a black American living in a racist society where whites have much more power. In the next moment, however, Easy feels calmer as he recalls his experiences fighting the Germans in World War II. "I ate with them and slept with them," Easy narrates, "and I killed enough blue-eyed men to know that they were just as afraid to die as I was." In similar passages throughout the novel, Mosley enables his narrator's history to be told while moving the plot forward.

Setting

The primary setting for the novel is Los Angeles. Much of the novel...