Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley

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