Only the Wicked [Hardcover]

While Ivan Monk, an African American private investigator, swaps stories with cronies in a Los Angeles barber shop, an elderly former player in the Negro Leagues collapses and dies in front of them. Intrigued by the man's hitherto unknown past and because the old man played ball with Ivan's cousin, Ivan investigates. His cousin, ostracized since his "anti-black" testimony resulted in a long prison term for an aspiring politician, attends the funeral and then is murdered (casting suspicions on the first death). Full of neighborhood activity, baseball and jazz history, and general comments on the human condition, this fourth title in the series (after Bad Night Falling) belongs in most larger collections; fans of African American mysteries will certainly enjoy.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Phillips' Ivan Monk series continues to receive far less attention than it deserves. The author's grasp of Southern California politics is razor sharp, and his evocation of inner-city L.A. is rivaled only by Gar Anthony Haywood in his Aaron Gunner series. Haywood's Gunner and Phillips' Monk, in fact, are similar characters: both fiercely independent African American private investigators, loyal to their families, proud of their community, uncanny in their ability to detect phoniness. This time Monk finds himself in the middle of a mystery that stretches from the Negro Baseball Leagues to the Mississippi Delta and back to Monk's own loved ones. The murder of Monk's cousin, former Negro Leaguer Kennesaw Riles, ostracized by the family for his spurious testimony against a black civil rights leader, takes Monk to Mississippi, where the trail leads to blues legend Charlie Patton and the racist Southern Citizens League. Phillips puts the historical material to good use, and he builds suspense effectively. Only the occasionally clumsy dialogue--too much backstory passed off as conversation--detracts from an otherwise gripping tale starring a genuinely charismatic hero. Bill Ott
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"... a fabulous investigative tale ..." -- The Midwest Book Review

"Gary Phillips is my kind of crime writer and Ivan Monk is my kind of detective ... an unbeatable combination." -- Sara Paretsky, author of the VI Warshawski mystery series

"He writes a tight, unadorned phrase most of the time, which serves to highlight his excursions into traditional snappy dialogue and hard-boiled philosophy." -- The Morning Star, England

"If Walter Mosley woke up the genre [of LA-based crime fiction] to the fact that contemporary black writers can jam on noir like juke joints, long shadows, and mean streets as surely as Michael Jordan is the Mozart of the hardwood, then Gary Phillips ... should positively nail its devotees to the wall." -- The Austin Chronicle

"Ivan Monk's ready to go down fighting, and he makes us feel that the war he's waging is for our own salvation." -- Walter Mosley, Walkin' the Dog

"[Phillips'] is a voice that should be heard and celebrated." -- Michael Connelly, Void Moon and Angel's Flight

"[Phillips] is a natural-born writer, who has clearly studied his predecessors, both literary and political, US and foreign. He writes a tight, unadorned phrase most of the time, which serves to highlight his excursions into traditional snappy dialogue and hard-boiled philosophy." -- The Morning Star, England

Old Man Spears was a quiet, regular attendee at the Abyssinia Barber Shop, a man nobody paid much attention to until the day he dropped dead, while the other regulars -- including Ivan Monk -- sat around playin' the dozens and cracking jokes on one another.

It turns out Spears played in the famed Negro Baseball Leagues along with Monk's cousin, Kennesaw Riles, who had been ostracized by the family for his questionable testimony, which put a political firebrand in a southern prison more than 25 years before. Then Riles dies, but not from natural causes.

As Monk becomes immersed in finding out who murdered his cousin, his mother is brutally attacked, and the case turns personal. Events take him to the Mississippi Delta to solve these crimes. There Monk hunts for a killer and crosses paths with the remnants of the racist Southern Citizens League -- while the wind wails Charlie Patton's "Killin' Blues," a mythical lost recording whose lyrics haunt the case.

In his fourth Ivan Monk mystery, Gary Phillips again gives the reader a terse story filled with twists, turns, quixotic characters and the pounding tempo of Los Angeles, combined with the slower tempo of the South, where only the wicked know the answers in the deadly magnolia nights.

Gary Phillips has been a union organizer; a community activist on various issues; a printer; written op-eds on politics and pop culture; been the executive director of a nonprofit advocacy organization; and the political director of an electoral campaign. He is currently co-producing a documentary on a local mayoral campaign. Phillips lives in the wilds of Los Angeles with his wife, Gilda, children Miles and Chelsea, and their semi-useless dog, Mitzy.