SOURCE: "Life and Death in 1950s' Los Angeles," in Chicago Tribune—Books, June 28, 1992, pp. 1, 9.

Adler is an American author and critic. In the following review, Adler finds "some prime observations about racism, as true to today's times as they are to [Mosley's period" in White Butterfly.]

Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, a Los Angeles apartment building owner who pretends he's the janitor and who solves crimes not for money but to save his own and his friends' skins, is trying to convince a grim secretary that he really does have an appointment to see the Oakland police chief.

"I had told her, in my best white man's English, 'I would like to be announced to the chief's office. I know that this is an unusual request, but a police officer from Los Angeles, a Sergeant Quinten Naylor, told me to meet him with the chief concerning a case in Los...