A San Francisco spoken word artist returns to New Mexico to be with his dying father, only to find he loses his "voice" as he is sucked back in to the dysfunctional life of drugs and violence he left behind.
In late 1940s Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins is an unemployed black World War II veteran with few job prospects. At a bar, Easy meets DeWitt Albright, a mysterious white man looking for someone to investigate the disappearance of a missing white woman named Daphne Monet, who he suspects is hiding out in one of the city's black jazz clubs. Strapped for money and facing house payments, Easy takes the job, but soon finds himself in over his head.