Named one of the “best 100 mystery novels of all time” by the Mystery Writers of America. The year is 1948, the town is Los Angeles. Easy Rawlins, a black war veteran, has just been fired from his job at a defense factory plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Monet, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs. Devil in a Blue Dress depicts power and corruption as deeply intertwined forces, particularly in the racial, gendered, and economic hierarchies of 1940s Los Angeles