It is the Summer of Love as CINNAMON KISS opens, and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armored car. Its farther outside the law than Easy has ever traveled but his daughter, Feather, needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time. And his friend Mouse tells him its a cinch. Then another friend, Saul Lynx, offers a job that might solve Easy's problem without jail time. He has to track the disappearance of an eccentric prominent attorney. His assistant of sorts, the beautiful Cinnamon Cargill, is gone as well. Easy can tell there is much more than he is being told - Robert Lee, his new employer, is as suspect as the man who disappeared. But his need overcomes all concerns, and he plunges into unfamiliar territory, from the newfound hippie enclaves to a vicious plot that stretches back to the battlefields of Europe.

• msytery novelafrican-americanMystery