Cinnamon Kiss

Written by Walter Moseley
Review by Gerald T. Burke

It is the Summer of Love, 1967. In Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins is scrambling to find money. His daughter, Feather, is seriously ill, and he is contemplating robbery as the only way to secure the needed cash for an experimental treatment she needs in Switzerland. But a friend and fellow detective, Saul Lynx, offers Easy an opportunity that would solve his dilemma without threat of the law. It involves finding a missing attorney and his assistant, Cinnamon Cargill. Easy is quickly immersed in a predicament that requires all his skills, not only to solve the mystery but to survive.

This is another fine novel in Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series. His prose is spare but riveting, and he does an excellent job of putting his plot and characters into the social and physical landscape of Los Angeles during the turbulent 60s. This is crime fiction at its best.