Perdition, U.S.A.

(Paperback)

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Description

Scatterboy Williams was a small-time hustler selling bogus Cartier watches in the dives of Pacific City, a port just south of Los Angeles, until a stranger guns him down in the street. Then drug dealer Ronny Aaron is shot leaving the liquor store. Next, college student Jimmy Henderson just barely survives his two bullet wounds. The three victims have nothing in common besides the neighborhood where they were shot and the color of their skin. When the police let Scatterboy's murder fall through the cracks, his girlfriend hires private eye Ivan Monk to find the killer. What looks like three unrelated shootings of Black men in Southern California will put Monk on the trail of a racist conspiracy-and white supremacists hatching nefarious plans with the potential to upend life along the entire West Coast. Black private eye Ivan Monk's search for a connection between three Black men murdered in Los Angeles leads to the unraveling of a white supremacist conspiracy that spans the West Coast. The mystery series that launched Gary Phillips's career. Scatterboy Williams was a small-time hustler selling bogus Cartier watches in the dives of Pacific City, a port just south of Los Angeles, until a stranger guns him down in the street. Then drug dealer Ronny Aaron is shot leaving the liquor store. Next, college student Jimmy Henderson just barely survives his two bullet wounds. The three victims have nothing in common besides the neighborhood where they were shot and the color of their skin. When the police let Scatterboy's murder fall through the cracks, his girlfriend hires private eye Ivan Monk to find the killer. What looks like three unrelated shootings of Black men in Southern California will put Monk on the trail of a racist conspiracy-and white supremacists hatching nefarious plans with the potential to upend life along the entire West Coast.

Reviews

Praise for Perdition, U.S.A.

Watch out, you fans of Walter Mosley's black private eye Easy Rawlins; he now has a rival in the considerable bulk of Gary Phillips's Ivan Monk. Monk traverses the same LA mean streets as Rawlins, although it's a more modern, post-apocalyptic city, if no less crime-ridden . . . . Phillips, an activist himself for over twenty years on issues such as housing and police abuse, knows the scene he writes about, and the result is a realistic, punchy novel that is not afraid to develop serious themes as it entertains.
The Irish Times

Gary Phillips is my kind of crime writer and Ivan Monk my kind of detective . . . an unbeatable combination.
Sara Paretsky

Ivan Monk makes a magnificent return in Gary Phillipss Perdition, U.S.A. Phillips creates a harrowing, deft portrayal of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, capturing its people, its mood, and its language with a skill so keen that he verges on sleight-of-hand. You wont be able to put the book down. You wont dare.
Wendy Hornsby, Edgar Award winning author of the Maggie MacGowen series

Phillips takes us on an end-of-the-century roller coaster ride along Americas dangerous urban streets and poisonous small towns.
Jervey Tervalon, author of Understand This

Hard-boiled detective adventure with plenty of raw energy.
Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Gary Phillips has published novels, comics, novellas, short stories and edited or co-edited several anthologies, including the Anthony-winning The Obama Inheritance- Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Almost 30 years after its publication, his debut, Violent Spring, was named one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He also was a story editor on Snowfall, an FX show about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central, where he grew up.