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Ivan Monk #4
Only the Wicked
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.
- GenresCrime
335 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2000
8 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Gary Phillips
202 books229 followersGARY PHILLIPS has been a community activist, labor organizer and delivered dog cages. He’s published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including South Central Noir and the Anthony award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He was also a writer/co-producer on FX’s Snowfall (streaming on Hulu), about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. Recent novels include One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem. He lives with his family in the wilds of Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 24, 2016
This is the fourth novel by Gary Phillips to feature L.A. private investigator Ivan Monk. The story starts innocently enough when an elderly man named Marshall Spears keels over and dies in front of Monk and a number of other friends at the Abyssinia Barber Shop & Shine Parlor. Only belatedly does Monk discover that, as a younger man, Spears played in the Negro baseball leagues with Monk's cousin, Kennesaw Riles.
Most of Monk's family has had little to do with Riles in the years since Riles' testimony was largely responsible for the conviction in the 1960s of a black civil rights leader named Damon Creel. Creel had been accused of killing two white female civil rights workers in Tennessee, one of whom he'd been sleeping with. The evidence against him was relatively weak, but an all-white jury convicted him largely because of the testimony offered by Riles. Not surprisingly, many blacks, including members of his own family, dismissed Riles as a turncoat informant.
Shortly after the funeral for Marshall Spears, Riles dies under mysterious circumstances and Monk begins an investigation of Riles' death which also leads him to look into the case against Damon Creel. The trail takes him from California to Tennessee and Mississippi, where even at the end of the Millennium, relations between the races remain relatively raw even though there's now something of a polite veneer on the surface.
The longer the case goes on, the more complex and dangerous it becomes. Even Monk's mother is attacked, perhaps in an effort to send him a message, and Monk suddenly finds himself alone in unfamiliar and hostile territory. It will take all his skills, mental and physical, if he's going to survive and ultimately find solutions to the very complicated questions that confront him.
This is a very engaging and well-written book that hooks the reader early on. Monk is a great protagonist and the insights that Phillips provides into black culture and society are riveting. In this case, I violated my rule of always beginning a series with the first book because one of my book clubs selected this book to read this month, but I'll be putting the first three on my TBR list.
Most of Monk's family has had little to do with Riles in the years since Riles' testimony was largely responsible for the conviction in the 1960s of a black civil rights leader named Damon Creel. Creel had been accused of killing two white female civil rights workers in Tennessee, one of whom he'd been sleeping with. The evidence against him was relatively weak, but an all-white jury convicted him largely because of the testimony offered by Riles. Not surprisingly, many blacks, including members of his own family, dismissed Riles as a turncoat informant.
Shortly after the funeral for Marshall Spears, Riles dies under mysterious circumstances and Monk begins an investigation of Riles' death which also leads him to look into the case against Damon Creel. The trail takes him from California to Tennessee and Mississippi, where even at the end of the Millennium, relations between the races remain relatively raw even though there's now something of a polite veneer on the surface.
The longer the case goes on, the more complex and dangerous it becomes. Even Monk's mother is attacked, perhaps in an effort to send him a message, and Monk suddenly finds himself alone in unfamiliar and hostile territory. It will take all his skills, mental and physical, if he's going to survive and ultimately find solutions to the very complicated questions that confront him.
This is a very engaging and well-written book that hooks the reader early on. Monk is a great protagonist and the insights that Phillips provides into black culture and society are riveting. In this case, I violated my rule of always beginning a series with the first book because one of my book clubs selected this book to read this month, but I'll be putting the first three on my TBR list.
Displaying 1 of 1 review