Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley (2007, Unabridged, Compact Disc)

The year is 1967, and times are changing, but not fast enough for Walter Mosley’s introspective, hard-edged but soft-hearted protagonist, Easy Rawlins. A Black Viet Nam vet trying to buck a racist establishment without it kicking back, Rawlins struggles to earn and keep his piece of the American Dream by working outside of the mainstream as a detective in post-Watts Los Angeles.

This novel opens to finds Rawlins feeling sorry for himself. His ex-lover, Bonnie, whom he’d sent away but with whom he remains desperately in love, is now engaged to another man. As usual, however, Easy’s life doesn’t afford him much time for personal regrets. A friend’s child is left on his doorstep with no explanation or instructions. And his old pal Mouse is in the wind, wanted for murder by LAPD. Both men’s trails turn up cold-blooded killers, military drug smugglers, and more than a few dead bodies.

Mosley uses first-person narration for his Rawlins stories, so readers can get deeply inside the psyche of his unusual and complex main character. In providing Easy’s actual audio voice, Michael Boatman strikes not one false note, and his differentiation of the other characters is solid and equally convincing.